And the holiday season is upon us!

I am writing this last update of 2024 in a bit of a hurry, as I fly off for Christmas tomorrow evening  (off to Miami to meet my new nephew!), and won’t be back at work until the 6th of January. 2025! Crazy!

I wanted to spend my last few lines of 2024 preparing you for the next semester and some of the things you might expect from it.

If you’re a fresher, you’re entering your first ever exam and assessment period. I know it sounds incredibly scary and that you’re probably very stressed out about it. Don’t worry! First of all, the fact that you’re a student at Bath means that you’re a good student and have all you need to succeed at assessments. Make sure to plan out your study sessions, have breaks, and most importantly – reach out for help if you need it! Our SU advice and Support team is always happy to jump on a call, and the university’s student support team are also fantastic at helping students through rough times.

While your assessments are ongoing, Amber and I will be busy traveling to the Visegrad group of countries for a SU and university tour organised by WonkHE, a national Higher Education policy debate group. Here’s the link to the trip and what we’ll be up to if you’re curious about it at all: https://wonkhe.com/blogs-sus/an-opportunity-to-engage-learn-and-develop-our-european-study-tours-in-2024/.

Shortly after that comes the inter-semester break (ISB, for the cool kids), and that hopefully means some rest for you, and preparing yourself for the second semester. Straight after that we will be hosting Refresh week, which, as the name implies, it’s another go at welcoming students back to Bath. It’s a smaller scale version of Freshers’ Week, and there are a lot of things to get involved in, so make sure to keep an eye on our website to know all about events and opportunities going on.

On February 10th, nominations will close to run to be an SU officer. As someone who’s done the job twice, I can promise you, this opportunity is worth it!!! I have a blog in WonkHE about rerunning to be an officer and about some of positives and negatives of the role. I would encourage you to have a read if you’re interested: https://wonkhe.com/blogs-sus/why-did-i-re-stand-as-su-president/. If you’re even remotely interested in any of the roles, let me or any of the current officers know, and we’d be happy to have a chat. Here’s a link to the website for you to find out more: https://www.thesubath.com/elections/runforsuofficer/.

By the first week of March, you’ll have gone through elections week and will know who your new SU officers will be. So, if you see us leaving officers a bit sad, that’s why! We’ve all loved it so much it’ll be hard to leave. March will also see our third SUmmit meeting.

April will give you another break, and if you’re writing a dissertation, you don’t need me to remind you that that’s probably when you will hand it in. After that we will have the final SUmmit meeting of the year, Varsity, and all the exciting award evenings (Group Awards, Education Awards, and a few other smaller events).

I will leave the update until there, because what comes after is my departure from this role and I’m still in denial about it...

I will come back in January with a summary of the WonkHE trip and our lessons learned. Before then, I wish you happy holidays, a restful break, and a warm winter, wherever you might spend it. Stay cosy and be kind to one another!

Much love,

Jiji x