Nell Wedgwood, a third year Linguistics BA student, was President of Pi Media and your Student Media Rep for 22/23.
I joined Pi at the start of my first year, but I felt too nervous to actually get involved or write anything for a long time. The first piece I wrote was inspired by the Sarah Everard case. It was something that hit really close to home on a number of levels, and I had a lot to say about it. I still felt quite self-conscious about reaching out and sharing my writing, but one of my favourite things about Pi is how welcoming it is, and the editors were so supportive and made me feel that I and my writing was really valued. The social media officer role was still open in the term three by-election, so I nominated myself and was elected. I loved feeling able to write more, and getting to know the inner workings of all the branches of Pi, so I decided to run for president for the next year and was elected.
I'm also a Student Media Rep - a voting member of the Students' Union Activities Policy Zone, acting as a representative of the media societies. The rep attends zone meetings to discuss and debate issues about societies and events, hold the elected leaders accountable, and inform Union Policy. The main goal is to make sure that members of media societies are heard and involved in the decisions being made, and advocating for things that might help them.
As president of Pi, I have overseen the running of the whole society. Pi is the oldest and largest journalism society at UCL, and it’s been a real privilege. We have three branches (online, magazine & PiTV), and a pretty big committee, so there’s a lot of moving parts and delegation involved. I liked to see the crucial part of my role as making sure everyone else felt supported and confident in theirs. My main aim was to be approachable and help everyone when and where they needed it: I helped with design work, editing, writing and commissions, organising events, marketing and social materials, and lots of cheerleading (and sometimes a bit of tough love).
I have felt so proud of so many Pi members and the amazing work they’ve produced. The work the section editors put in for our new editorial section has been really insightful, and seeing the collaborative efforts of everyone involved in our magazines come to fruition in the final printed forms was wonderful. Hosting our two magazine launches was actually quite emotional. Everybody worked so hard, and we were all so proud of each other.
On a more personal note, I really enjoyed working on the articles I was able to contribute for the magazines - Progress and Nurture - looking inward and outward to explore things I was passionate about: feminism and the UCU strikes. I found it so rewarding being able to do some more in depth writing, interviewing really interesting people, and working to understand the issues I was exploring from as many angles as possible.
At points it has seemed like a lot of work to be taking on (especially with a part-time job on top), but ultimately it made me better at organisation, time-management and multi-tasking. With such a great team of people around me in both roles, I found myself in really supportive environments, and that really helped take some of the pressure off.
I know it sounds super cringey to say, but I really think that my work with Pi and as Student Media Rep has been invaluable. It’s given me a lot more confidence: in my writing, in my leadership abilities, and in networking. I’ve been able to become more adaptive to different situations, delegating and switching between leading and supportive roles in different teams. They do come with a fair amount of admin and form filling (i.e. the dry side), but it’s pretty useful to have demonstrable skills with that and the attention to detail needed. Jumping in to help where needed in Pi also means I’ve been able to learn a lot about editing, marketing and design (and all the software it involves).