On the 10th & 11th of March I got the opportunity to go to Milton Keynes for this year’s NUS International Conference.

This is a place where international representatives from Universities across the UK come together to discuss current issues regarding international students, set new policies, get the opportunity to attend workshops of different kinds and vote for the next year’s Officer and committee.

So I headed up there on my own, not really sure what to expect. The first day of the conference started off with a welcome talk by Mostafa Rajaai, the current NUS International Students Officer, before we all went off to attend different workshops.

I got the opportunity to learn more about International Student’s mental health and how to tackle it. We also got a visit from Students for Europe who talked about the EU Referendum, and we had a panel discussion about student activism on asylum seekers and refugees. We then spent several hours discussing and writing up new policies that we would vote for the next day, where I worked especially on a policy about student housing and the right to rent. The day ended with a gala dinner (see below photo) and informal hustings by the Officer candidates.

The second and last day of the conference was mainly about voting for and electing next year’s NUS International Students Officer as well as the committee and the new policies we wrote up the day before. It was a long and interesting day, especially knowing I had to travel all the way back to Cornwall straight after, but absolutely worth it. Mostafa Rajaai got re-elected as next year’s Officer and we now got a lot of amazing new policies in place, including the one I worked on.

I got to meet a whole lot of people from different Universities from across the UK and take part of several very important debates, learning a lot and getting even more motivated to work hard for our International Students here in Cornwall!

So if you ever get the opportunity to attend any of the NUS conferences I would highly recommend it.

Thank you,

Mathilde Baade

International Executive Officer