Student Ambassador
One of the first things I knew I wanted to do for sure at university was to be a student ambassador of some kind. By now I must have been a student ambassador for at least 4 separate purposes. I love answering questions of people with that little glint of excitement in their eye, and showing them my enthusiasm for having now manifested that same glint that I had when I was younger.
I first got hired to be an SA by the widening participation department at the university. Coming from a disadvantaged background and having recieved a contextual offer, I saw this really as my opportunity to give back to all those people that helped me along the way. I can still vividly remember the talk I attended by someone from UoB about writing personal statements. Throughout this SA work I've assisted on Uni Day experience programmes for students from disadvantaged areas in Bristol and visited schools to talk about what Uni life is really like. I love this work because you get to plant the seed of aspiration into minds that might not have considered that there was a way out before. It's great.
I then got hired by my department - who would here on in fight to have me at every event possible, against the intentions of the central events team!! Mostly, I would work on "post-offer visit days," where we spend a few hours with prospective students who have offers from us, trying to persuade them to come. Being a student of as cool and interesting (and fun) degree as Innovation, this is not often a difficult task and frankly there's a real joy when I meet first years that I've seen at these days before - gives a real sense of fulfilment. At several of these, I've presented a talk about why Bristol is a great city, which is always fun because I have a plethora of cool and interesting facts that no-one needs to know but should!
From these days I've also been asked to do some interesting side jobs for the department. At the end of my first year, I was asked by Prof. Kirsten Cater, the then Director of the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, to give a talk to a group of people, at the Royal Institute in London, called the Bristol Pioneers. These people are the Don alumni of Bristol. They're a group of individuals that make up the University's most lucrative philanthropic investors. It was my job, along with my colleague Holly Simpson, to persuade these people to keep investing, by talking about how brilliant the new Innovation initiatives at the university are. At the event I met some pretty amazing people and networked with some key figures from within the university's administrative and academic structures. It was INCREDIBLE fun!!
One final thing I've done (of the many) as a student ambassador at Bristol is create the little video embedded below. At the end of my first year, I decided that not enough people were coming to study Music with Innovation in particular. I think this probably had something to do with the disposition of musicians to not want to deviate from music and not understand how their skills can transfer so easily into professional design work. So I created this video to explain and persuade people to study my degree.
I hope you enjoy!
