Not a very NUS related title, but if nobody complains then I won’t mention the Northern Ireland/England game!

The bulk of my time since I last blogged was taken up completing my Masters dissertation, however, I did manage to squeeze in a few NUS events.

In the middle of August I attended the NPC (National Postgraduate Committee) Conference held in Strathclyde Union. As a taught masters student I found it interesting to speak with other postgraduate students, and was shocked to hear how long a PhD actually takes – most take at least four years. This is a worrying issue when you consider that funding for many PhDs is for three years – even those of you who claim to hate maths will be able to spot the obvious problem here! For the next year I will be the NUS Observer to NPC, and I am looking forward to working with them.

The following week I stayed in SW Scotland and attended NSLP (Scotland) in James Watt College’s Waterfront campus. It was great to see everyone so enthusiastic about the course, and keen to go back to their institutions to start training. Hopefully everyone enjoyed the pub quiz – James Alexander (NUS Scotland Depute President) and I put our googling skills to good use to come up with some ‘interesting’ questions.

The NEC meeting on the 22nd of August was an interesting event. We didn’t get to any motions, following long discussions on the two priority campaigns for the year, the international students’ festival, and the move by the government to ban some organisations. I was really pleased to see that the Participate campaign managed to discuss both involvement in politics and playing sport on one page – suggesting that it is possible to be both political and sporty!

Last week I was back in London to attend both a BUSA Exec meeting and the Campaigns Launch. This was my first BUSA Exec meeting, and also likely to be one of the most significant they will have this year. Proposals to change the structure of BUSA were presented following a strategic review, and these will be put to the membership over the next couple of months.

Following the BUSA meeting I was able to attend the NUS Campaigns Launch at the TUC building. It was good to see the campaigns taking shape, and to get a positive reaction from those watching.

In the past wee while I have also moved to Edinburgh, which proved once and for all that as much as I hate packing, I hate unpacking even more!

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