Hi friends! I’m Oliver and I’d really like to be your activities and opportunities officer next year. Ever since I started uni I’ve been super involved in societies, becoming a president in my second year and holding various other committee positions during my three years here. I also work with Livewire, part of the media collective, who I would be responsible for. I genuinely believe that doing clubs and societies is the absolute best way to have an amazing uni experience and meet some fantastic friends, as well as hopefully gaining some skills to take into the working world when you’re done here.

There’s a whole bunch of things to do with activities at UEA that I want to improve on, but here are my main three priorities:

• Foster more collaboration between sports clubs and societies
• Ensuring that funds are allocated in a fair way that considers the clubs and societies that are sometimes forgotten
• Make known the employability options students have available to them and create new ones

To expand slightly – sometimes I feel like societies and sports clubs are two completely separate areas, and to create some more opportunities for them to work together would help elevate all of them to be able to put on much more impressive events and create a more tight-knit community here. Whilst obviously they have different needs, fostering links between the two could make for some awesome content this year. Alongside this, a major complaint I run into a lot is that smaller societies and sports clubs that don’t do traditional sport are sometimes forgotten when it comes to funding and other help from the SU, and I’d love to spend a year giving them a helping hand! Lastly, most students I know (including myself!) don’t really make the best use of all the employability advice we have at UEA, and I want to help remind societies that the work they do, especially as committee members, is extremely valuable when securing that graduate job out of uni. It shows drive, experience, and to make sure you are exploiting that is key.

And that’s just the start! I’d love to look through the committee training program and see if it can be streamlined at all, and possibly create some events and support for all committee members. So far here at UEA I’ve helped create my own alumni system for my society and worked with the SU as a part-time officer, and I hope to bring that experience and passion into this job, too. Having worked with the SU previously, I’m hoping to get straight down to business when I begin so that I can really make the most of my time here. I’m forever grateful that my society gave me friends and helped steer my carer direction, ad I want to make sure that all students can have that sort of life-changing experience here.