Categories: university
Tags: pointless
Date: 21 February 2008 20:23:02
For my sins, this academic year I am the staff-student rep for the postgrad research students in my department. Today I finally went on the obligatory half-day training for reps. What can I say? Group work. Argh. Two hours of my life I'm never going to get back - though the facilitator was good and appreciated that a lot of the stuff wasn't relevant for me, and encouraged my written feedback so hopefully future postgrad reps will have something that is actually relevant to what they may have to face. It was fine for undergrads and those on taught courses, and that was squarely who it was aimed at. As it is, if I have to confront something like assisting when a student is having a hard time with their supervisor, for example, this training has done precisely nothing to equip me to do that well.
One of the things we got asked is why we had wanted to be a rep. I had to be truthful (just in the small group, I wouldn't have been so bolshy to the whole room as that wouldn't have been fair on the facilitator) and say that the reason I was doing it was because nobody else wanted to, and at least doing it this year means that I know for sure I won't have to do it next year when I'm writing up. I'm so altruistic.