Xiaohongshu
What led you to do more in the society this year?
Societies play a big role in connecting and keeping students engaged with university life, so this year it was more important than ever to ensure we did as much as we could to support students. This year has definitely been the craziest year to be part of a society but the fact that everything had been moved online was a big opportunity to do something different, something new and something creative which excited me, even if it would all be done from home. We launched a series of entirely new events, changing how the society is run and how we operate, and it was rewarding to see our social media following almost triple as a result. These events included one of the first virtual conferences of the year focused on COVID-19, a new ‘Women in MedTech’ series, a new mentorship programme and a new networking event series. We also developed a novel online learning and networking platform, ‘The MedTech Portal’ and hosted one of the biggest events of the year, the ‘MedTech UCL AI in Medicine Series 2021’; all alongside several other MedTech talks and workshops’. Planning and running all of these events felt like we were doing something important for students this year.
We also enjoyed the creative process of growing a society and meeting some great people along the way. To facilitate all this new activity we expanded our committee without whom these events would not have been possible, particularly the senior team within the society; Johannes Heyl, Mannat Rana, Hugo Ferreira, Alessia Qiu and Faye Tsai who I had a great time working with. It was also incredible at the end of the year to be nominated for two awards at the UCL Society Awards, ‘Most Developed Society’ and ‘Best Online Event’.
E
The Big Uni Move
This year student mental health has been severely impacted and observing its effect first-hand, as well as in those closest to me, I wanted to do something to help, so others would not feel as alone going through the same thing. Therefore, myself and a friend, Mannat Rana, came up with an idea to organise a two-week long inter-university Strava competition, ‘The Big Uni Move’. We had both experienced the benefits of exercise for our mental health over lockdown and hoped to encourage more people to try too, not as a solution but simply as a tool that could help get people active, incentivised through a friendly competition between UCL, King’s, LSE and Imperial College. A central aim of this was to also provide a community for students to connect with each other. We were both passionate about the idea and had a moment of ‘Let’s just do it’, deciding we would make time to put in the work despite our busy schedules. We could only work at the end of the day after completing our university and society work, which meant we often had to work quite late, sometimes till 5am in order to plan the logistics of the challenge and coordinate with all four Student Unions! We were incredibly happy to see that all our hard work was worth it with over 300 students getting involved!
This year made it very easy to become detached from the world and that detachment can be harmful, something I definitely experienced this year. Having these different projects gave me space to think creatively, stay engaged with the world and meet new people. It’s something that’s helped a lot in managing the difficulties of this year.
For me, university life is all about following your curiosity, finding your people and thriving in a community. This last year, community has been more important than ever, and I am pleased that this year we have been able to contribute towards strengthening ours.
Written by Nish Rai, Biological Sciences