| Phyl's Union Activities Page |
| Ever since the start of my last year of EME, in 2000, I found myself getting involved with loads of stuff in and to do with the Student Union at Strathclyde Uni. It's been brilliant, I love it all. Here's a wee bit about each of the things I've gotten into. |
| Path through the Union and onwards |
| First of all I became President of the EME Society, my course club, which is an affiliated club within the Clubs and Societies department of the Union. With the help of the rest of the committee, I helped organise a bunch of events for the people of the EME course, ran the EME website, and tried to raise our profile with industries a bit. |
| I ended up standing for election to be the Convenor of Clubs and Societies for the following year, and was elected, so I headed up the Clubs Exec for a year, trying to run the department well and make some improvements, and also served as a member of the Student Executive that runs the Students Union. It can be stressful, but it's all fun really! All that later lead to my going on to Deputy President of Strathclyde in 2003-2004. I looked after the democratic functions of the Union, internal communications, policy, and many other things I somehow got to deal with! It was a fantastic year with a lot of good achievements. During that year I became interested in taking things further, and trying to do similar work for even more students. I moved into the National Union of Students, where I won an election to become Depute President of NUS Scotland. As Depute President, I am responsible for various areas of campaign priorities, and have several big projects I'm trying to get done. It's a very challenging and rewarding job to say the least! |
| University of Strathclyde Student Charities Appeal (Strathclyde Rag) |
| It is very hard to encapsulate the Rag experience in mere words, even pictures only give a shadow of the the full impression it can have on you. Rag is a bunch of volunteer students who have weekly meetings and plan, or take part in, a huge range of charity fund raising events throughout the year. We raise money for loads of different charities, doing street collections (Raids), Events in the Uni, sponsored events, and writing a silly magazine each year. We also have an insane time while we are at it, invariably getting up to all kinds of mischief, getting some good drinking done, and generally having a great time. Rag are a brilliant bunch of people and I am proud to be with them, I'd reccomend to anyone to get involved with their Rag if they have one. In my role as Depute President of NUS Scotland, I'm working on developing a pack to help other institutions set up Rag groups, and to get a network going between them all. |
| I was part of the Strathclyde Karate club doing that regularly for a few years. Since getting involved at higher levels of student politics I've not been able to keep going. I really miss the training, it's good exercise, and good self defense! I reached my third belt, 7th Kyu Yellow belt. I competed with my club's team in the Scottish Nationals 2001, which I didn't expect that early, but was honoured and did my best (not too much damage, it healed!) First time I fought in a competition it was making up a missing team member on another side, fought against my own team, and erm... put them out of the competition..... Oooops! |
| Strathclyde Karate Club |
| Strathclyde Skydiving Club |
| That's right, I jump out of planes that are otherwise perfectly functional! I was a member of the Scottish Parachute Club at Skydive Strathallan, Perthshire, the oldest club of it's kind in the world. Some day I hope to eventualy go back to it and get all the way up to full freefall jumps from 10,000ft or so! |