March brought the Leadership Elections in which I am delighted that Emily was announced Vice President of Education and Democracy for the next academic year. Emily is a third-year student studying Education but also a founder of the Partnership for Educational Reform project which looks at decolonising the curriculum. Emily has been so involved in various projects within the University and I believe she will be a fantastic asset to the University as they move to create a more inclusive and accessible curriculum for all of our students. I also feel confident that as a student, I will have the best representation in Emily so I have more reasons why I can’t wait to be a student again.

However, being Deputy Returning Officer was difficult. There was a lot of behind the scenes catfighting which was difficult to manage and to be fair to all of the candidates. Is it that hard to follow rules? Based on my experience campaigning with the same rules – definitely not! But apparently, there are issues every year.

March also saw more progress made regarding Personal Academic Tutors and identifying existing Mental Health First Aiders. It seems while the University does have roughly eighty of them, they’re either not spread out evenly throughout staffing in different faculties, or they just aren’t on the list.

I also changed my working hours – I now work 10am to 6pm. This is to help me out as I struggle in the mornings and I’m definitely a night owl so prefer working in the evenings. I am grateful to have a flexible working environment where that is possible.

I was able to get a lot of smaller tasks done this month. Whether they were You Make Change submissions for the Library or requests directly from students about, well, the Library, it felt good to tick them off of my ‘to do’ list.

We finished the month off with our first face-to-face Trustee Board which was nice to get everyone into the same room and have a chat! It was also our Chief Executive’s Leaving Meal which was again lovely to get together and say goodbye. Unfortunately, the last few days of March were struggling with a toothache.

While this month may not have brought big projects to a close, it certainly did make positive progress in the direction of completing projects before the end of my term in office. Plus, I think we were all recovering from Elections Night Live!