Annika: The empowerment it gave. To show how you can use your strengths and weaknesses to an advantage. The people. Lovely atmosphere and camaraderie that the Staff and Students showed. To include everyone. No division between universities. Nice to have something in common and a common goal to work towards.

Hang: The conference welcomed us with its own participants, we were quickly teamed up with other PAL Leaders from Ireland, Sweden and all across UK. All the tiredness from the long trip were replaced with warm, inspiring connections between all PAL Leaders, and it were friendships that we found it hard to part with when leaving the city for Bournemouth.

Rowan: Aside from meeting other people and making friends, I think my favourite parts were learning about other PAL schemes, the mindset workshop, and the creative pitch challenge. It was really interesting to hear what Peer Support/Peer Learning schemes are like at universities from all across the country, and even some from Sweden! There seems to be such a variety in the form PAL takes, and I feel like I can learn a lot from these differences. 

Annika: Personal confidence and the ability to brush off trivial comments made by others. A direct focus for my future. Confidence in myself and to be proud of who I am. Encouragement that I am on the right track.

Hang: After three days, I probably took home with me some good honey – confidence and nice ideas to run PAL sessions. 

Rowan: The conference helped me develop my ability to think and act pragmatically, in the face of an ever-changing educational world. I also learned the importance of challenging my fixed mindset. I feel like I can now push my mindset and remind myself that intelligence and skills are always open to be developed through learning and experience. The mindsets workshop also helped me to begin identifying the barriers and triggers that I experience that cause me to have negative or unhelpful mindsets, and this is the first step in me working to improve in these areas.

Annika: Include everyone. Even if they don’t feel comfortable but to find ways that they can communicate and contribute to the sessions. The loudest, confident people usually dominate the sessions. So, to be weary of that. Focus on the student as a whole to empower them to be well rounded individuals.

Hang: The PAL Conference was run like no other conference, which means it is operated by the spirit of facilitation, where participants worked together to generate knowledge in the Pollination lab about Popular Culture, or where a PAL Leader shared her idea about Ripple Effect in helping students understand the unit – participants do the work! In such a sharing atmosphere, it was amazing to see so many other PASS/PAL/SI Leaders shared the same difficulties as I had when sessions did not go well, as well as the beautiful moments when we could help out students, but we were all so passionate to put our best into every session.

Rowan: I would really like to run a wellbeing session, so I will be discussing this with the other PAL Leader I run sessions with to see if we both agree on its importance. I’m also working on a session plan based around personal and professional development. This would include what I learned in the mindset workshop, as well as things like identifying your strengths and weaknesses, motivation and confidence.

Once we returned to Bournemouth from the conference, we challenged our leaders to create plans for a PAL session based on what they had learned. Each leader had original ideas and different ways to implement them. Find out more below...