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The Sabb Blog: Dan Curran
The day in the life of a sabbatical series next looks at the thrilling life of the Educational sabbatical, Dan Curran.
I arise when the light comes from around the edges of my blinds and my annoying alarm rings until I muster enough strength to pull myself up and reach for my phone, only to see the time is 7:45 am, and with a loud grunt I’m up and heading for the shower. As a member of an ethically and environmentally friendly organisation I try to walk to work everyday, but it just so happens that this day was particularly cold so I got a lift.
As I arrive in work I spend the beginning of the day setting up the laptop and making sure I’m ready to tackle the onslaught of emails, although technology has given me a sense of forecasting because my phone is of the smart generation, so I can see how many emails are in my inbox. This does give me a slight insight into how my day will go, but nevertheless a number does not hold the same information as an email can, so anything could happen! On this day my inbox brought me one particular delight; reports about surveys that had been carried out looking at the tuition fees issue. This report stated that “a reasonable number of students would accept a hike in tuition fees” obviously this is not what I wanted to see. The more I read the more I realised that this headline had been used to grab people’s attention and potentially send out the wrong message that students would love to pay more. I soon discovered that the most preferable amount to pay was to keep fees capped to around the £3,000 mark, obviously with inflationary effects. The poorer background students were seen to be voicing the most grievances to any rise in fees, and this is perfectly acceptable because in a nation where one of our main aims is to widen participation in higher education, this move to higher fees would look to price out these students.
This issue is one that I have been planning action on for the main part of my year, and is something I feel very strongly about. Tuition fees were contested by students when they were introduced and again when they tried to lift the cap. This time it is all about linking issues such as these back to students and the election process. We want to get students to register and use their vote in the coming general and local elections because their voice needs to be heard. The ‘Town Takeover’ style event (see NUS web pages for more info) for Canterbury is being run under the banner of ‘Canterbury United’ which is a collaboration between Kent union, Canterbury Christchurch union, Canterbury college union and University for the Creative Arts union. My personal aim is to get students to take it upon their selves to lobby our local council and parliamentary candidates and get some real results, not just for students but the local community they are a part of (see www.canterburyunited.co.uk of visit us on Facebook for more info).
On with the day, I set aside planning events for this campaign and turned back to tackle the inevitable email surge that comes in around lunch time. Mainly just internal communications and minutes of previous meetings, looking up the action points left for me to deal with when one e-mail popped in and gave me a much needed smile and it was the opening of Kent union elections. This suddenly gave me a flash back to the time when I decided to run for this position and the nervous feeling that set in once I submitted my nominations form. Flash forward and it’s campaign week and I’m out and about, no matter what the weather (but it just so happened to be sunny all the time) and even after my 21st birthday, up at 8am on campus by 9am to push through to students that I’m the candidate for them! Once more flash forward; it’s the Friday night I’m in the venue on stage awaiting the results of my election. Next to me stand my also nervous opponents; I stare at the screen when suddenly in a flash the slide with first round of voting appears when it should not. The immediate feeling of whose line was bigger! After all the drama and results I can remember just sitting there not really feeling any different but stunned to the fact I had won.
The day continued with yet more emails and then one came in saying that union council had been cancelled due to snow, now I know it’s not right but there was a tiny feeling of relief, I really did need to sleep. So I proceeded to pack away and descend the hill home trying to avoid falling on my bum as it was very slippy!