My reflections on the RAISE Partnership Special Interest Group Meeting
Monday, the 21st of May, Newcastle University

As a final year student, just a few weeks away from graduation, attending the RAISE SIG meeting was like a stroll down memory lane. And throughout reflecting in-action – during my active participation in the discussion and even delivering a 1-minute pitch on what the benefits of being a student leader through partnership are – and on-action, which occurred on the train journey back to London, there are three main aspects I focused on.

One, this whole meeting confirmed just how big my love for learning is and how much I have enjoyed every single moment of my academic life, a big part of it thanks to participating in the Students as co-creators projects, one per every university year.

Two, I have been immensely lucky to make lifelong friendships with fellow peers and staff members, and develop this sense of belonging to my own community of people, whose passions and ideals I share.
And three, being part of student partnership projects has aided my personal and professional development through helping me discover aspects of my own self – e.g. how interested I am in Research and working in a people-focused environment; also increasing my self-confidence more and more throughout the years – and developing numerous transferable skills – examples include leadership (by being the project leader for my final two student-led research projects), time-management, organisation (juggling academic workload with extracurricular activities, work AND trying to have a social life wasn’t easy!) and analysis (I found having to make sense of primary data collection findings fascinating!).

Finally, attending this conference meeting has made me realise just how lucky I have been throughout these three years of study to be able to participate in such projects, meet new people, put everything to practice and get to enjoy every bit of it!

Anna Dolidze, Final year student in Business Management (Marketing)