Quality Assurance Administrator
London South Bank University

Sukie C

0:00:03 I’m Sukie C. I’m a faculty quality assurance administrator at London South Bank University. Quality assurance basically means making sure that the courses we run at South Bank are fit for purpose and they do what they say they’re going to do, so we’ll regularly review them. We have a set of guidelines at South Bank, and every year we do a review of each course that we run, and we have sort of a portfolio of about a hundred and fifty courses. The reason I love this job, probably, is the fact that you get to work with students and you realise it’s a forward thinking organisation, so you’re working towards sort of changing people’s lives, which it really does, and I love being a part of that. It’s absolutely fantastic.

00:00:40 At school I think one of the main subjects I was sort of always good at, always excelled in, was probably maths, and it has kind of followed me through from High School to college to doing my degree in maths. When I was in my third year at High School I had a new maths teacher and he was absolutely fantastic, and he explained sort of what else you could do with maths and how else it… how it does get more involved, and after that I sort of decided yes I would like to perhaps study this at university, so I think that’s when I decided probably it’s something I’m going to take further.

00:01:10 University was great. I mean everybody goes on about how it is the best time of your life, and it really was. It was absolutely fantastic. I had a wonderful time. I got to do something that I was not only good at but I sort of enjoyed, and the sort of social aspect of it, the academic aspect of it, everything was wonderful. I had a great time at university. I think I was the first person in my family to ever go to university. I mean my sister went sort of at the same time. So it was a bit… I sort of didn’t really know what to expect when I went there, but at the same time it was nice being the first person to have gone out of my family. My family was extremely proud, yeah, that I was not only the first person to have gone but to also have graduated, so, yeah… They still have the pictures to this day.

00:01:50 I sort of started applying for jobs and then I got my first job in a company called Crime Concern, where I was working with young people at risk of social exclusion. That was… that was… I was very lucky because my first job was an absolutely fantastic job. It was… You get to work with young people. We did things like having football coaching sessions, and we had a music studio on the premises so we sort of teaching young people about the sort of technical aspects of producing a song, and it was just great. It was just so much fun working in an environment with young people.

00:02:21 Outside of work, I love to travel. I’m passionate about travelling, and hopefully it’s something that I’m going to carry on doing. Just over a year ago I made the decision to go to Uganda to do some work out there with an NGO, and that was a huge turning point in my life in terms of the way that I… not only the way that I live my life, but in terms of what I want to do with my life in the future. And I went out there and worked with remote villages, sort of giving them educational workshops on things like living a healthier lifestyle. The people I met, and the friends that I made, the experience I had, it was just so much fun, as well as hard work, but it was so satisfying to be able to be a part of these people’s lives. That it’s something I’m hoping I’ll be able to take with me wherever I go.

00:03:07 I think I’d always like to sort of carry on the travelling and doing more kind of work with sort of NGOs in all sorts of different countries, and that probably comes from going to Uganda. So, yes, I’d love to continue doing that, and hopefully in five/ten year’s time I’ll see myself perhaps in another country, working for an NGO.

00:03:26 One of the best bits of advice I was ever given when I was in school was from the head teacher of my school there, and she said ‘Don’t ever listen to the people that tell you you can’t,’ which is a fantastic piece of advice because you sort of… I took that through with me, and it’s just you realise that it’s limitless what you can do and just almost follow what you want to do. If you have an interest in something, by all means eat.