I'm a Fashion Design student and coming to uni as a commuting foundation student made me feel a lot of emotions. I put myself into all that I could and what the University had to offer, and the best bit is it was all for free. The Big Deal is an amazing thing the Students’ Union offer which measn everything is free and it allows you to do so much more. I did netball my whole time at uni and ended up being first team captain in my final year.
As well as meeting new people, these opportunities were amazing for me to build knowledge, skills, and development to further my career along with my degree. I recommend to anyone to just get involved in everything you can within the Students' Union as the opportunities can take you so far.
One of the things that has really helped me is the Leadership Academy which I did in my final year and I recommend everyone to do it. The Leadership Academy gave me free online courses and skills sessions to help me further develop my knowledge and skills within the job I wanted. It really opened up my eyes to my strengths and how I can turn my weaknesses into strengths, specifically to make me a better person for the industry and jobs out there.
They have regular meetings to suit you which really helped with my workload at uni in third year and the regular communication helped me talk more about what I wanted coming out of uni. I'm graduating this year and have come out of University with a first class degree and a job within a month of finishing. The Leadership Academy definitely gave me the push and the confidence to do all this and I wouldn’t be where I am without it.
I have loved my time at Bucks and The Big Deal making everything free to students really allows you to maximise everything you want out of it.
-Eloise Maslin, Leadership Academy graduate 2022