Proud to be a Newman Student!

Hello everyone!!

I was meaning to write a new blog post for quite a while now, but didn’t quite get round to it, so I saw a great opportunity to do so when I got the day of work!

However I now have the problem of having too much to say, so I will try to keep it short.

Ok so where to begin. ..

Perhaps to elaborate more on the title–  well the thing is I’ve always been proud to be part of Newman – even my friends who don’t attend this university (or any university at all) know a lot about Newman because it’s something I’m always talking about (I’m such a fun friend!).  However what happened last Thursday left me feeling an even stronger fondness for Newman, a feeling of pride and awe.  It was a celebration of the university achieving its full university title and the installation of our first chancellor- Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor. I can’t help but feel that this feeling can only be fully appreciated by those who were there.

The campus was filled with university staff and students and a range of special guest all dressed in robes; all there to celebrate this event, making it a special and successful day in Newman history – I didn’t want it to end to be honest. It made me appreciate my time at Newman even more, but also a little bit sad as I’ve only got a year left (so bitter sweet) I know it’s going to be hard to leave a place that’s so home-like and welcoming.

On a lighter note, watching a catholic service for the first time was really eye opening. I was particularly surprised on how friendly, kind and witty the chancellor and the priest were – the media always portrays them as being dead serious!

Timetable slightly changing- not in terms of lectures, but what I do outside of that. As you may already know, I’ve been continuing with my school placement on Mondays and Tuesdays as I am not in University on those days. However recently I decided to get some experience with marketing at the university. Therefore now, I’m only in  school on Mondays and in marketing on Tuesdays. So far it’s going really well! Everyone in marketing is great, I love helping out, and feeling a sense of accomplishment once a task is completed.  I also love gaining new skills and see the benefit of it, also because I love Newman, helping out in marketing fits into what I believe in.

Students as academic partners (SAP)- I love writing blogs, and I really enjoy reading other peoples blogs aswell. While I was reading Jess’s blog, she mentioned the ‘students as academic partners ’ project. This is a project where staff and students work together to strengthen the student learning experience at the university for the benefit of everyone. I love getting involved in different things (surprise surprise) so it didn’t take me long to decide that this is something I really want to do.

Luckily (and almost coincidentally) I received an email from a staff who also wanted to be involved in this project and together we came up with a great idea for it. We wrote the application, sent it off and lo and behold it got approved. (Hooray!) All this just happened last week, so we are still finalising our idea, and have a meeting to talk about this further, therefore I will mention what the idea is and more information about this once it’s all fully confirmed. (Look out for that in my upcoming blogs).

Though I’ve been in Newman for almost two years now, I’m still meeting some amazing new people all the time. Most of which I got to know through the social café . I particularly love the people at the social café because they all come from different cultures and backgrounds so it’s great to be in one room together, have fun and learn at the same time. (Not looking forward to them leaving though!… I think I form attachments too quickly hmm).

I’ve also recently joined a new performance group that takes place at Newman, where we meet up weekly to prepare for the final show. (More information on this will also be posted in my upcoming blogs).
Finally just want to say, for those who came to the last applicant day it was great seeing you all, and hopefully you got a lot out of it. For those who couldn’t attend, the next one is on the 5th of April!

Thank you for reading!

Look out for my next blog soon!

p.s I totally failed at keeping this short! Sorry!

Tahne 🙂