Hi everyone,<\/p>\n
I\u2019m Orla, a third year Economics and Politics student here at Lancaster. I\u2019m currently involved with the swimming and water polo club and I am the Co-President of the University Politics Society, so I have got lots to keep me busy. I am also one of the student mentors this year, so any questions about Lancaster life, don\u2019t hesitate to ask. I hope these blog posts from myself and other mentors help you out and maybe we will see you here at Lancaster soon.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s around about now that everyone realises it\u2019s go time! Not only are deadlines on the horizon for essays and coursework tests, but week 5 has posed the first big challenge for the swimming team. Week 5 plays host to the British University and College Sports Short Course Swimming Championships in Sheffield and it\u2019s a fantastic meet. It is great to put the first five weeks of training to the test! It\u2019s the first time I\u2019ve done this meet since starting at Lancaster (way back in 2016, how time flies?!) and it went off to a flying start. First up was the 4x50m front crawl relay and I broke the 30 second barrier for 50m front crawl for the first time ever! I could not believe it! Day 2 brought the individual 50m breaststroke and the same event as part of the 4x50m medley relay and I was only 0.4 seconds away from my PB. The third and final day brought the 100m breaststroke and 50m fly. The 100m breaststroke was very tiring and my time was alright, but 50m fly gave me my second PB of the weekend \u2013 achieving a time of 33.97 seconds! Couldn\u2019t be prouder to be a part of the university swimming team!<\/span><\/p>\n Aside from swimming, my role as Co-President of the university politics society has meant that we\u2019ve been busy hosting the first events of our calendar. We started with a Question-Time style event, where we encourage student panellists from the on-campus political parties to talk about current events. Subjects discussed included Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court and the ominous Brexit. That was a fabulous event with lots of lively discussion between panellists and audience alike. We are also hosting a pub-quiz this term (21st<\/sup> November) and some lecture-style events on some super interesting topics including Korea!<\/span><\/p>\n On the academic front this term, I have been studying British Foreign Policy since 1945, Health Economics and International Business, in addition to working on my dissertation focusing on the influence of cabinet government in the United States. These modules are predominantly essay-based, with Health Economics having a couple of presentations involved. I actually don\u2019t mind the essay format of assessment. It might take a lot of work, but it means I get to read around the subject a lot and get a good understanding of it. My essay topics this term have included parliament\u2019s role in the making of foreign policy, the use of pay-for-performance to improve the quality of health care and the risks posed to firms who want to operate in different countries. <\/span><\/p>\n All in all, it\u2019s been a pretty busy term so far and the halfway point is the opportunity to time to shine and show off what we have been working towards. \u00a0That\u2019s all for now guys, I shall update you soon on what the next few weeks have brought me.<\/span><\/p>\n Orla <\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hi everyone, I\u2019m Orla, a third year Economics and Politics student here at Lancaster. I\u2019m currently involved with the swimming and water polo club and I am the Co-President of the University Politics Society, so I have got lots to keep me busy. I am also one of the student mentors this year, so any […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1032,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5DvUs-dk","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1032"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=826"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":834,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826\/revisions\/834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}