A big thank you to all of the graduates who have given their time and expertise to support our students this year.

On 16 December, two graduates from the class of 2019, Jack Bidewell and Matt Flack, joined a video call with first years to talk about their careers since graduation. Both succeeded in finding graduate level jobs straight out of university and both have managed to stay in employment during the pandemic, no mean feat! As such, they were a wonderful inspiration to our students.

Their key messages were that the ethic of working hard and meeting deadlines has been of great benefit for working in competitive target-driven industries.  Jack added that learning to always support claims with evidence helped him to develop that crucial skill when he makes pitches to clients.

Matt’s main message was to make the most of the services offered by the Careers team to explore skills and preferences so that students don’t end up in jobs which do not suit them and where they will be unhappy.  Both emphasised the need to undertake voluntary or paid work wherever possible and make the most of the networking opportunities offered by the Politics and IR programme while at university.

Yesterday was the last of a series of contributions made by graduates to our programme this term:  

• Kojo Apeagyei, Bronwen Edwards, Robert Emejuru, Andra Grecu, Shayne Halfpenny-Ray, Rebeka Papp and Dan Turner made videos for our virtual Welcome Week.
• John Maas guest lectured on the MSc International Relations programme.
• Noora Virtanen mentored a student.
• Andra Grecu and John Maas contributed to our Covid-19 in Kent and Medway blog. 
• Vlakta Pezer and Will Giltrow participated in the MSc Welcome Week.

This has been a challenging term for obvious reasons, but we lecturers are deeply grateful for how graduates have willingly volunteered to engage with our students in all these different ways. This has motivated our students and benefitted staff by easing our teaching burden a little bit.

Graduates tell us that they love helping out and it really means a lot to us that these bonds stay strong. So, a big thank you to everyone involved!

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