Well, this is my first blog as National President and I’m just not sure where to start. The past couple of months handing over from my predecessor, Gemma Tumelty, have been fun, challenging and pretty amazing all round. The pace has taken me by surprise and I have a lot more sympathy for Gemma’s occasional weariness and not-so-occasional outbursts of anger whilst chairing NEC meetings!

So, what does the National President do? Since I took office, I’ve been up and down the country attending regional receptions for new officers, attending our national summer training programme events, visited students’ unions, and met with politicians from the Labour Party, the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats (I tend to leave the nationalist parties to NUS Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). I’ve secured £50k worth of funding from the Prime Minister’s Initiative for International Education, to fund a new international students’ project for students’ unions, and attracted press coverage at home and across the world for condemning a right wing think tank for some ludicrous report that vilified Muslims on our campuses (and subsequently denounced as a ‘clown’ by Melanie ‘I make Genghis Khan look like a leftie’ Phillips).

I’ve been in the press talking about student debt and hardship, been gearing up for our Higher Education Summit and campaign launch next month, chaired my first NEC meeting which (finally!) passed a break even budget for the year ahead. I met with David Eastwood, the Chief Executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England, and Sally Hunt the General Secretary of lecturers’ union UCU; scored another goal in the ongoing push for student members on institutional review teams in England; appeared before a House of Commons Select Committee to talk about Skills (and gaining coverage for one of our Citizen 16 campaign goals – a minimum wage for apprentices).

I met with Brendan Barber, General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), attended the annual conference of the Federation of Student Islamic Societies, met with the vice-chancellors of the 1994 Group of universities on the student experience, and gone toe to toe with Higher Education Minister Bill Rammell in a debate on academic freedom and another on Higher Education Funding.

I’m sure I’ve missed stuff out. It’s made me realise that I’m going to have to blog more regularly to give you a better idea about what these meetings mean and how they impact on students’ lives. The reality is that the pace is relentless and it can be really hard to stop and take a breather.

In the midst of all the meetings we have, the campaigns we’re planning for the year ahead, the people we’re talking to and the challenges we’re overcoming, lies something pretty incredible: the ability to change students’ lives, whether that’s on a particular course or programme, across an institution or across the country. It’s the prospect of changing students’ lives that made me run for the National President back in April and it’s the one thing that sits at the forefront of my mind as I start the year and the process of delivering on my manifesto.

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