And just like that, we’ve made it to 30 blogs together!

Can you believe it? This means that there have been 30 times where I’ve sat at this very chair in my office and typed away, trying my best to keep you up to date with everything going on in the SU officers’ lives. This post is not an exception!

I must begin by submitting a redaction: I said I would update you all on the first SUmmit meeting on this blog, but it will be on the next one, as the SUmmit meeting is tomorrow. I know what you’re thinking... Jiji, you could’ve just held off and written this on Wednesday so you could tell us about SUmmit. The answer, dear reader, is no I couldn’t have. Two reasons, one, this week is insanely busy (feel free to have a look at my outlook calendar if you think I’m exaggerating); and two, I’m already a couple of days late on submitting this as I was ill on Friday – when this post was originally due. So, apologies to my whole blog fan base (which I’m sure is a total number of about five people, and one of them is Amber).

Now on to business.

Last week was MANIC.

Monday was mostly about setting up for the rest of the week, as Liv, David, Amber, and I headed to London for a conference organised by WonkHE – which ran for all of Tuesday and Wednesday. The conference in question is any Higher Education (HE) policy nerd’s dream. The name encapsulates that nicely. Are you ready for it?

The name is...

The FESTIVAL of Higher Education.

Oh yeah. That neeky.

And we had as much fun as one could possibly do when discussing HE policy and best practice across the UK. Add in there a mix of all different HE stakeholders: university reps, SUs, private consultancies, British Council, OfS, DfE, and other national and international bodies; and you get the perfect recipe for me to melt my brain trying to keep all the information in. Why should you care that we went to this? Because all sessions were incredibly informative on what other places are doing to tackle some of the issues we face at Bath: widening participation and its subsequent attainment gaps; assessment feedback; housing; international networks; and there was even a session on Labour’s mission on opportunity for all. We also got to network and meet fascinating people which might prove to be useful to know in the future if we have any questions about anything coming up in the sector.

I rushed back to Bath on Wednesday night in hopes of making it to Score with the football girls. I didn’t make it.

I did however, make it to Thursday’s university strategy planning away day. And yes, I just recently told you about one of those. This is the second one they’ve organised. Similarly to the last one, it was a great opportunity to keep students considered during the conversation of the next university strategy. Not much else I can say on this yet, but I will as soon as possible.

Friday officially took me out. I called in sick. I think my body could only manage so much excitement on one week.

And today, here I am sat telling you about all these things, after having spent my lunch meeting all the Olympic athletes that were in Paris this Summer and have some sort of connection to the university. That’s 30 athletes. Crazy, right? You can imagine how much we fangirled when we got to just mingle with them.

I’ll leave there for now.

I do promise to come back with an actual summary of SUmmit next time. Until then, stay warm and be kind to one another.

Much love,

Jiji x