Sarah Hodgson, Stage 3, Media, Communication and Cultural Studies
Elected Liberation Officer
Describe your placement
Towards the end of my second year of study, I was elected as one of Newcastle University Students’ Union Liberation Officers.. I officially began working in this role at the start of my final year of study, bearing in mind the workload of both my academic work and volunteer work at the Student Union, I decided that to get the best out of both these experiences I would use this as my placement for the Career Development module; not only did this allow me to gain academic credit for all my work, it also allowed me to dedicate more of my time to my position. Personally, I feel that the CDM allowed me to put extra time and effort into being a Liberation Officer, whilst at the same time ensuring that I still had time to commit to my university workload.
What skills did you develop?
Throughout the CDM and my role as an Officer, I have gained and increased several vital skills, such as organisation, communication, teamwork and leadership. I believe that not only have these skills enhanced the quality of my work for the Student Union, but I have also been able to transfer these skills to other elements of my life, particularly in my academic work, predominately my dissertation, but also in my part-time job. As well as this, I have more confidence in myself, and along with my new set of skills, I believe this will stand me in good stead when applying for graduate jobs and attending interviews. Already, I am seeing the benefits, as recently I gained a place on a BBC Journalism mentor scheme, and one of the main reasons I was successful in this was because of my work as an Officer.
What advice would you give to other students?
The best advice that I can offer to students either taking the career development module, or considering it, is to put everything you have into the module. Whilst at first it may seem easy, you will only get what you put into it, so in order to be successful it is important to really work hard and to be passionate about what you are doing.