11 days in....

After 11 days of officially being President, it's about time I posted an update of what's going on with the PG Society, what's about to be going on and what you can get involved with!


The first thing that deserves a mention is the fabulous Postgraduate Ball which was organised by the 2010-11 Events sub-committee.

(Photo from the Postgraduate Society Facebook page)

This glamorous event took place on the 10th of June in the suave surroundings of the Garden Suite in the Scores Hotel, St Andrews. A special shout out must go to Paloma, who did a wonderful job of organising the event and to the Black Sheep Music Society and our accomodation rep Milindu for the best Ball music I've ever had the pleasure of dancing to! (ceilidh music excluded naturally!)

Following the PG ball, David (the outgoing President) and I have been in "meeting-mode"! So far, in the past couple weeks we have met up with:

• The outgoing sabbaticals from the Students Association to summarise the advances made during the year and to talk about priorities going forward
• Prof. Dina Iordonova, the Provost of St Leonards College, 
• Rob Warren at Student Services to talk about proposed development of the wardennial system for postgraduate students
• The team at University Estates to consult on behalf of the PG student body on the space and accomodation planning process
• Ryan Parks, head PG Warden, to talk about consulting with students in University accomodation over their accommodation preferences and to liaise over plans for events over the coming year
• Chris Lusk, Director of Student Services, for a catch up and to talk about the role of the PG Society in relation to the wardennial and ASC (Advice and Support Centre) provision and;
• Stephen Evans from the Webmaster team to get his advice and help in building a **NEW WEBSITE** for the PG Society on the St Leonards College website

I've been completely overwhelmed by how helpful -and generally lovely- everyone has been! While we have been approaching these meetings with an open agenda, so we can get a feel for the different kinds of relationships we can seek to build with various departments and people across the University, we've also been getting some feedback on our own issues.

We've been pleased to realise that the new proposal for electing PG Vice-Presidents within each School, who will sit on a forum co-ordinated by the PG Society, is well supported by everyone we've spoken to it about. This is great, because we can now confidently move forward to arranging the elections for October!

We've also been collecting feedback on what information should go into the PG Freshers 2011 information pack and online information portal (which we are currently building). 

Finally, we've been looking at the events we should be throwing for the rest of the summer, and what our orientation week schedule should include! I don't want to give away the surprises... we have an events subcommittee meeting tonight... but several buses and a safari may or may not be involved!

Anyway, I don't want you to think it's all work and no play! I've also attended the brilliant fundraising evening featuring the heartbreaking film 'Grave of the Fireflies' (1), gone to Wimbledon for a bit of sporting relief (2) and enjoyed some PG Society events preparation with my colleagues in the School of Management (3) and with the rest of the conference delegates at the Moral Economies of Creative Labour Conference in Leeds (4)!

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

Anyway- lots of preparations to do for the events sub-committee meeting! I'm going to sign off- But don't forget to follow us on twitter (@StAPGSociety) and like us on Facebook (Postgraduate Society St Andrews).

Study Hard!!