The Child Nursing Society

At university, students have lots opportunity to get involved - including joining societies.

At the start of every year, ARU holds an event called Freshers' Fair. This is where students come together will all the societies, learn what they do and can sign up to join them.

Students also have the opportunity to be involved in the committees of societies. This involves being part of a team, organising and running all the events the society want to put on throughout the year. This year I decided to get involved with the committee of the Child Nursing Society as it is my passion to learn more about my future career so that I feel more knowledgeable when I qualify. I decided to become the president and I asked a few of my colleagues if they would be interested in being involved in it too. They became the Administrator, Treasurer, Events Officer and the Fundraising Officer.

In order to organise all of our events for the year we decided to hold a meeting all together to discuss what we wanted to do throughout the year. We came up with the following ideas.

• A give it a go quiz - we wanted to hold a quiz so that everyone could get together at the end of the academic year and have some fun. It went really well! 
• A trip to the Florence Nightingale museum- we want to organise a trip to this museum as we feel it would be beneficial to learn about the history of nursing and how it will affect our careers in the future. 
• A guest speakers day – we want to invite professionals into the university to talk about their experiences within healthcare and how we can use their experiences within our careers. 
• A medical ball- we would like to work towards organising a party to celebrate all of our successes at the end of the year. We are starting to look into this and will be fundraising in order to organise this. 
• Fundraising - we would like to do some fundraising for local hospitals and charities that mean a lot to us. We will hold events throughout the year in order to do this.

As a committee member I am able to log volunteering hours and gain certificates which will help build up my CV and make me different from all the other applicants when I am applying for jobs. We also have access to a ‘committee hub’ which helps us to run our society. It is where we do all our training, all the health and safety forms and can get help with running our societies.

If I was to give students three tips about running a society I would say:

1. Keep a diary so you know what you are doing and when 
2. Make a message group with the committee so that you can stay in contact easily
3. Make it fun! Don’t be too serious, be aware that people have other things to do and be flexible with everyone. 

To a student thinking about joining or running a society I would say ‘give it a go’. I have really enjoyed it so far and have met lots of new people through doing it.