Rep of The Month: Alia-Zara Akhtar

Why did you want to become a rep? 

I wanted to be a Rep to enable students to have a voice. I am a first-year student, and my peers seem to get daunted at having a say as they are new to university life, so I wanted to make sure first years do not have that barrier. Everyone should have the opportunity to voice their opinions. I personally love talking to new people and so I knew I could take on the role and make change where needed. I felt I could make a change so it would be good to go for it.  

I came across being a Rep from emails and it felt like something that would be good to get involved with. I always love getting involved with new experiences and I wanted to help first years. It was a good opportunity to see what I can do.  

What have you done so far this year, and what are your plans for next term in the rep role? 

I want to continue being a Rep next year. This year I have engaged a lot with how classes are running. I heard that students felt uneasy about speaking in class and felt unable to put their hand up and speak even when they had done the work beforehand. As lot of people would attend but no one would speak I noticed this reducing attendance as time went on. I spoke to friends in the class and shared a feedback form with course mates to understand barriers as to why students did not want to speak. From this I received 25 responses from the course mates, and 100 responses from a wider survey I ran to the cohort of 300. From the survey, students said the layout of seminars were daunting, students would come in and answer questions with no group work, and students wanted to discuss to feel confident in their answers. 

So, I spoke to module lead about my findings on a lack of engagement and communication. I sat down with module lead to include more group work and try to increase engagement. This was implemented  a week later and ideas were discussed as a group during seminars. I noticed students listened to ideas and shared notes and peers really enjoyed it in comparison. This encouraged people to begin attending again and the group initiative were really positive. Maybe this was small numbers, it had a really big impact! 

How do you see being a rep impacting your future? 

I am currently looking at being a department rep –  in this role I would like to improve communication and career and skills support. I wants to help students access these opportunities as a lot of students don’t know where to go to access these things. I have always been in the loop about Law work experience but that’s not something that’s accessible to everyone. I have the knowledge to help others and so I want to continue being a Rep to continue helping students.  

In terms of skills, this has helped my confidence a lot. English is my third language, so I lack confidence and sometimes I struggle but putting myself in situations where I had to speak to people means I have to talk a lot in person and see staff and students. I liked seeing the impact I have made and having to get involved has improved my confidence. This is a life-long skill that I can take with me.  

Before this role I hadn’t had the experience speaking in meetings much before, so this has really pushed be to constantly communicate and bridged the gap between how I feel I speak and how I actually speak.  

What's the best thing about being a rep? 

Best thing is the exposure to what it is like to run a department and what the lecturers and seminar leads do behind the scenes. It’s not as easy to fix an issue as it seems, and there are many challenges that need thinking about to solve. It’s great to see how things are run behind the scenes and link these back to your own life. It helps you realise how organised lecturers and departments are, and it taught me more about what I need to do. 

What would you tell someone that is considering being a Rep? 

This is definitely something you should give a go! It seems daunting and people think that you need to be a certain type of person (really academic, or really confident) but you don't! Anyone can be a rep, and it's important that people understand that. You can go into this role and make it work for you, don’t have any prerequisites – just give it a go!