My day as an OU guest speaker...

A few weeks ago I got an invitation to be a guest speaker at the Open University’s Combined Communications Conference, an internal conference which aims to improve all aspects of communication by the university.

Needless to say, I jumped at the chance whilst at the same time being a bit nervous about having to stand up in front of 150 OU staff and tell the (in my opinion) quite mundane story of my experience with the OU. I’ve never thought of myself as anything other than a completely normal run-of-the-mill student so my story isn’t particularly interesting, but I now know that, in fact, so many people at the OU don’t really get to hear from us. They hear from the extraordinary cases and the ones who’ve done really well, but all of us average students who just mosey along quietly seem to slip away into graduated oblivion and are never seen of or heard from during our time there.

I arrived at the conference mid-morning when it was already underway and after marvelling at the tameness of the squirrels-in-residence at Walton Hall and staring at them for 10 minutes with a glaikit look on my face (until such time as a bus driver started giving me sideways glances) I slipped into the crowd during the tea break and immediately latched on to the gorgeous Hannah Beaman. The rest of the morning was a break-out session to brainstorm ideas and identify what sorts of stories/keywords etc are likely to attract the attention of different groups of students (i.e. unemployed looking to break into the job world, career-driven 30-something, retired leisure learner etc) which I found fascinating. I’m truly amazed at the level of understanding the OU staff actually have about the different cohorts of students.

During the breakout session my gaze fell upon a rather handsome bearded chap wandering around taking photos and I instantly blushed at the realisation at it was none other than Documentally (aka Christian Payne). Our paths have sort of crossed a few times before but we’d never actually met so I hoped I would get the chance to say hi.

Collapse with pressure? Flush crimson?
During lunch I got chatting to a few faces I recognised and had a good catch up with Hannah, trying not to eat too much in case my nervous stomach landed me in a bit of a pickle come time for my speech ,which seemed to come around all of a sudden. Hang on, wasn’t there a video by Joe Pasquale before me? I must’ve zoned out with nerves but I’m sure his video sounded worryingly similar to what I was about to say. The new Director of Communications Lucian Hudson introduced me with such enthusiasm I thought I was gonna collapse with the pressure or trip up on my way to the lectern and flush crimson from my schnozzel but sadly I didn’t and was stood there in front of 150 people about to ‘tell my story’.

Tumbleweed. You know that moment when you say something you THINK is funny but no one else is laughing...

Na, I’m kidding, it didn’t really happen. The 10 minutes I was asked to speak for passed by in a fairly quick blur. I stumbled my words a bit and probably forgot to mention a few things but on the whole I thought it had gone quite well and there were plenty of people wanting to ask me questions at the end (either a sign that people were interested or that I hadn’t mentioned enough important stuff. I’ll assume the former). I sat back down red cheeked and shaking but to rapturous applause, pleased that I had done my bit and chuffed that a few of my OU friends in attendance had tweeted to say I’d done a good job (thanks folks, you’ve no idea how reassuring those tweets were).

Life changing...
After another talk/speech about branding we broke for afternoon coffees and that’s when it happened. I dunno if it was perhaps blindingly obvious that I was nervous or if it was all genuine, but a good half a dozen people I’d never met came up to me and shook my hand, congratulating me on a great presentation. I felt great; you can’t buy that kind of praise and for Lucian Hudson to say that he actually reads this blog... well, that was just fantastic. I read his, but that’s different; he’s the Director of Comms, I’m just a lowly student whose greatest skill in life is waffling.

Evidence of my skill was demonstrated during said tea break when Christian and I finally met (and I got a very continental two cheek kiss from him, gotta love a man with a beard) and he did an Audio Boo with me.

Although my waffling did lead to this, which is just the greatest thing ever...

Needless to say I went home with a smile on my face having had a great day, meeting loads of lovely people and visiting my spiritual home. For how nervous I was about standing up there I got the impression that it was something many OU staff don’t get to experience and if I’m the student who gets to sing the praises of the work they do and champion how life-changing a thing the OU is then I’ll happily puff up my chest feathers and gladly tip my hat at getting to say, from myself and every OU student I’ve ever met, a big thank you to every single person who has contributed to my education. We, quite literally, couldn’t do it without you all.

So thank you.

 

Picture credit: Christian Payne