Many candidates are already preparing their campaign for this year’s Leadership Race, some might even be picturing themselves in the student officer hot seat. But how many actually understand what an officer does day-to-day?
It might not always be easy to see what a student officer gets up to from an outside perspective – it’s not just showing your face at the big events and chatting with students. In reality they spend a large part of their time, thrillingly, in meetings and planning (often for the next meeting); this is the side we don’t often get to see.
So to make this all a bit clearer, for potential candidates and students in general, we spoke to Emma Simeng-Zhou about what she might expect from a day as student officer.
“I just found a typical day on my calendar, which was the 14th of January. To start with I had a meeting at 9am with the [student officer] team and Noel Morrison, the academic registrar, he’s in senior management. I meet with these people to raise students’ issues, see how we can help them solve the problem and eventually feedback to the students,” she explained.
Emma told us working with the senior management team was one of the ‘biggest bonuses’ of being an officer, as she learns so much from their points of view and experience, making her better at her job every day.
She continued: “Then at 10am I had a speech with ‘Welcome to your Students’ Union’, which is for the new international students who arrive in January. Every year we have 30 to 40 international students come in to start their course and as a union we want to make them feel welcome.
“I’m an international student so I was glad to give them a speech about what we do, how we can engage them and how they can make their student experience fun. Their feedback to us was really good and helpful.
“When a student comes back to you and said ‘I’ve really had a good time here and you helped me a lot in the beginning and I made loads of friends from different countries,’ I definitely think it’s worth it.”
After her lunch break Emma got the opportunity to make a short film with StaffsTV for the One World Week event, speaking to the camera. She said: “It’s always exciting to make videos. I love working with student groups (like StaffsTV), they are proactive and good at what they do. We can learn so much from them. Their attitude and patience was fantastic when I was making them retake so many shots.
“Afterwards I had an equality enhancement committee meeting, then at the end of the day I had a Leadership team meeting which is when I meet up with all the senior staff in the union to talk about ideas or what we’ve been up to over the last two weeks. It gives a proper perspective on what the union is doing and how we can improve the student experience.
“That’s my typical day. I really like days like this because I never stop learning at any point.”
Finally, we asked Emma what her favourite part of being an officer was.
She replied: “Being an officer means I get the opportunity to learn from all these other people. I can meet up with the senior management team with over 20 years of experience, with academic group leaders as well as lecturers. They give you loads of different perspectives and values that I think I can take on hand for my future career. That’s the biggest benefit that officers have: no other job can offer what this role can.”