My name is Marta Cipriano and I am a final year BSc Criminology and Sociology with Quantitative Methods student. I am a mature student, a carer for my mother, and also work nightshift a few days a week. I have fought hard to get to where I am now, and know how challenging life as a mature student can be, and so I want to make a difference!
Often as mature, carers, or part-time students we are forgotten about! Our sacrifices as parents, as workers, as family people, are taken for granted and this is where we put an end to it.
In order to make a better future for ourselves and our loved ones we often have to give up family time, work day and night to make sure we manage school and work, have childcare issues, work nightshift to study during the day, and take on part-time courses to make sure that we have enough time to not sacrifice any more than we already have. As mature and part-time students, university education is a luxury and we fight to make it happen as well as our full-time lives.
As your Mature and Part-time student representative, I want to make sure I do everything I can to lessen the pressures we go through and make our time at university more pleasant. I want to guarantee recorded lectures, post-pandemic! Not always are we able to make it to class due to life issues and having the recorded lessons means that we can re-watch the lessons at a better time and not miss content!
I want to add the 48 hour upload grace period permanently for Mature and Part-time students, who often already have those time management skills with life itself, but sometimes 24 hours in a day is simply not enough!
I want to make sure attendance is not penalised when something comes up! Often after 3 missed tutorials/labs/seminars, students are contacted being asked for justification for their absence, and this can lead to further investigation. For those students that are taking modules where attendance is marked, how is this fair? Instead of marking attendance, which often has nothing to do with the quality of the student, how about the student is valued by their hard work and assessments?!
Let me fight for your voice! From my first year I have been student rep for various modules and I am currently the Lead Peer Mentor for the school of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work and a Rep for Criminology. I am not afraid to make your voice heard!