#heartarts

Every year Arts SU and the Teaching and Learning exchange at UAL collaborate to put on the Teaching and Course Reps Awards!

It is a time to celebrate and recognize our wonderful lecturers, support staff, technicians and tutors who empower us in our learning, challenge us and push us outside of our comfort zones. It is also a time to celebrate our course reps, who work so hard in ensuring that your feedback is listened to by the university. At a time where the Government have pushed marketisation to the forefront of how universities are run even further, with the introduction of TEF (Teaching Excellence Framework), and the OFS (Office for Students) defying the fundamental principles of what education should be about - a tool to better the world around us, an opportunity to expand our horizons and a public good that benefits the whole of society - it is important that deeds like this don’t get missed. 

Excellent teaching isn’t measured by metrics, or gold medals. Excellent teaching are the teachers that go out of their way to inspire, support, and empower us as students.

1. ‘Hiya’

This means HELLO or HI. Why add a ‘ya’ on the end? Still trying to figure that one out.

2. ‘You alright?’

When this is said in passing, you’re going to want to stop and say: ‘Yeah I’m fine thanks for asking, are you okay?’. Don’t do this. This is a rhetorical question. By no means respond with an actual answer. Simply repeat the question back and keep walking. 

3. Pancake Day

Also known as ‘Shrove Tuesday’. We have a day to celebrate and eat pancakes. It’s a thing and it’s happening. Mark your calendars because it’s a BIG DEAL - Tuesday February 13th, 2018.

4. A million x’s

Literally, a MILLION X’s. The equivalent of xo but would you write xoxoxoxoxoxoxo after every text, email, comment? Well, we do! 

5. You don’t wait in ‘line’

You wait in a queue! The queue is what keeps the UK moving at a steady pace. Be it at the supermarket, on the tube platform, or waiting for the bank to open. We queue. 

6. HP sauce

We don’t think anyone knows what HP stands for, it anything at all BUT we do know that this is the nectar of all condiments for all occasions. Find one in a Tesco aisle near you. 

7. ‘Taking a piss’

This does not literally mean using the toilet. It could mean any of the following, someone’s not taking you seriously, someone’s playing with you, someone’s laughing at you. This is actually said a lot more than you may think!

8. Taking the ‘elevator’

Is actually known as taking the lift! All our signs point to the lift. Not sure what this elevation business is all about. Must be some sorcery stuff...

9. 15th July 2016

You see that? The day is BEFORE the month when writing the date. because the date is always before the month. Simple.

10. ‘Cheers mate!’

Best of all and what you’ll hear EVERYWHERE and 24/7. Cheers, mate! We may not be friends but it’s only right to!

Coming to London (possibly for the first time) is as scary as it is exciting. We know this! 

So, to help ease you in, we’ve put together a series of helpful tips to get you through the transition, whether you’re a local or not.

Enroll online 💻

You might have received information from UAL about how to enroll online. If not, don’t fear, there’s a good few weeks before you should chase it up!

It’s important to enrol online before you arrive to start your course, as you will need evidence of enrolment to get your student card, which you will need to enter the buildings for lectures. You’ll also need to have enrolled before coming to any of our Freshers’ Festival events, taking place on campus. We don’t want you to miss those! If you’re confused about this at all just email your course contact for help.

Get your finances sorted... 💰

If you need student finance or a visa to study here then make sure that you get these sorted out before you come. The student loans company has lots of information on the website to guide you.

… and ensure they’re safe!

Make sure that your bank accounts are all in order and that you have all the details stored in a safe place. You will guaranteed need some amount of money for something almost immediately, so ensure that you’re always able to access your bank account. It’s a good idea to set up online banking. Check out how to manage your money better here.

Map it out 📍

London is a beautiful city to get lost in, but that’s not much comfort if you’re running late for something! If you’re at all unsure about what to do, then it can be a good idea to plan out some of your most useful journeys (such as from your accommodation to your campus) ahead of time so that you’ll always be in the right place at the right time. For tips on this check out our transport post.

Keep your contacts close ☎️

It’s a good idea to not only take your mobile phone with you when you’re out and about, but also to memorise or write down the important contact numbers - just in case you lose your phone or run out of battery. That way you’ll always be able to contact someone in an emergency. Major key: buy yourself a power bank!

“Alright, mum…”

Every year Arts SU and the Teaching and Learning exchange at UAL collaborate to put on the Teaching and Course Reps Awards!

It is a time to celebrate and recognize our wonderful lecturers, support staff, technicians and tutors who empower us in our learning, challenge us and push us outside of our comfort zones. It is also a time to celebrate our course reps, who work so hard in ensuring that your feedback is listened to by the university. At a time where the Government want to introduce a framework called the, Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), that will allow universities with better ‘teaching quality’ to increase their fees on the basis of arbitrary metrics that don’t actually measure teaching quality, it is so important that our deeds like this don’t go missed. Excellent teaching isn’t measured by metrics, or gold medals. Excellent teaching are the teachers that go out of their way to inspire, support, and empower us as students.

“If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me?” - Maya Angelou

“Rest and self-care are so important. When you take time to replenish your spirit, it allows you to serve from the overflow. You cannot serve from an empty vessel.” - Eleanor Brownn

At this event we learnt to identify why we might not be taking care of ourselves, and what we could do. We covered different aspects of self care:

Burn out:

When you burn out, you feel tired and drained most or all time, which lowers your immunity and you can get sick a lot, you can have frequent headaches or muscle pain and change in appetite or sleep habits.

Some of the emotional signs can be depression, lost of motivation, feeling helpless, trapped or defeated, a sense of failure and self-doubt and decreased satisfaction and sense of accomplishment.

Therefor, you may end up withdrawing from responsibilities, isolating yourself from others, procrastinating, using food, drugs or alcohol to cope, and taking out your frustrations on others.

We actually did an exercise that consists on drawing a “problem tree”, next to the roots we wrote down different possible causes for burning out, and up of the tree we wrote effects that these causes could have, you can do it with us!

And remember: burnout is not the fault of the individual. Burnout is a symptom of the society we live in.

Self care, self love:

Do you actually know what’s the difference between these two? We used a lot of post-its to express what each term means to us:

Self-care has proven to improve people’s physical health, and even get them cure from different diseases. What does self-care mean to you?

Overcoming barriers:

Mirror advice: How can we overcome the effects of a burnout? There’s another small exercise that you can do with us, grab a friend that may be/have struggled/struggling too and:

Answer to each other: What stops you from engaging in self-care?

Write down those barriers and give them to your friend, and ask them to do the same. Once you see their barriers, think of ways to overcome them and suggest those ideas to them. Ask them to do the same. It gets easier when they are not your own!

The #FeelingMySelfCare Rule: The Golden Rule is that one should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself.

One should treat oneself like they would treat others.

If you treated yourself how you treated other people that you cared about what would you do?