It’s clear that my clearest area of growth has been my graphic design skills. I started this role with no graphic design experience at all and over the course of a year and a half built up my skills on the job to the point where I was employable as a social media intern for East Durham College in summer 2020.

I’m delighted that after 3 years, the role was promoted to a committee role (and myself with it). It was an honour to spend my final year contributing to the wider decisions we make as a society.

I’m also proud of my achievements in branding having come up with titles and slogans for a range of events and campaigns over the years.

What I’ve discovered in my time at CU is that I naturally struggle with delegation and compromise. In my assessment the two are linked by my tendency to get invested in and passionate about projects. This means I have a genuine, good-intentioned desire for tasks to succeed, but in that context I struggle to “let go” and openly collaborate.

Over the last 4 years therefore I’ve learned a lot about compromise and maintaining a constructive, objective perspective. It’s taught me to be a better communicator, and helped me focus on making sure my “yes” really means yes and my “no” really means no. While this is still something I’m working on, I’ve definitely come a long way.

There’s been so many over 4 years. I think one of my proudest moments with the group was our first main meeting of my final year, when after a strong marketing and welcome campaign, we were delighted to have approximately triple the number of members we previously had. We had the good problem of needing to seek alternative venues, as the group had now outgrown the venues we’d used for years.

The group we had was a diverse and enthusiastic group. Looking back I was pleased that we were able to cultivate a friendly and welcoming atmosphere, allowing many first years to form friendships that most probably wouldn’t have formed without CU.