A tough time - February 2010

After the last couple of weeks of madness thanks to social work and social care students in January I have been experiencing third year nursing and post-grad student madness recently. On top of the insane deadlines for this cohort of students I have been busy with the organisational demands of meeting our financial needs the good old Billing. This month I have managed to complete all of the Billing for January and get all the file records for every student up to date. This has been a number of very late nights but I have promised myself that I will be taking a week off to recover. I have been sending Red Letters out to very bad paying Local Authorities because I think that 12 months delay on payment of funding agreements is beyond of joke. I think RED paper is getting the message through as I have had a couple of apologetic phone calls but I am still waiting upon payment.

As soon as some of money hits the bank account I will be down to the accountant so that we can get the end of financial year accounts done since they are horrendously over due. This also means that things like the additional National Insurance payments will have to be made.

There is officially something like three weeks to spring and I want to be personally and organisationally in a better frame of mind by then. They say that the first two years of a company are the most stressful and I would agree with them at the moment. We are yet to see the financial benefits which our business plan suggested we would get but we can see the income stream there in the accounting books.

The last eight months have been some of the toughest but we have managed to stay together as group even though we are all experiencing a high level of stress thanks to the disjointed payments and our personal financial crisis. I think the collective has also helped as we have been able to network ideas and talk to each other over the workplace dilemmas which we are faced with on a regular basis. As soon as we get our heads above the water line I am planning to have a recognition event so that everyone effort is acknowledged.

When working with students I think as support tutors we forget the personal support input we have with students. Just our presence in their week can help students to bounce ideas and have the reassurance to discuss academic dilemmas. Sometimes we hear the personal and this is were an academic support tutor must remember to signpost the specialist services such as welfare and counselling. We get to know our students and often we can be their own encouraging face in the week in a world which seems to bombard them with demands and responsibilities.

Action plan

• Remember to smile and keep on trucking
• Your smile will be answered with a smile
• Student surprise you when your simple smile brightens their day.