Sonia’s story

Sonia is an Achievement Analyst at Southampton Solent University where she works on supporting students to achieve and the University’s Access and Participation Plan. She is also Chair of the staff BME network. Sonia did a Grit programme for staff.

It was unexpected. Grit was much more about self-reflection than I had thought it would be. It gave me new perspective on my job, one I hadn’t considered before. I realised how I was always focused on own internal dialogue, how I wasn’t fully listening to people. Grit has reframed the way I go into conversations and interactions.

For example, I’m working on setting up a student diversity network and I’ve been trying to get students involved by explaining the benefits for them, such as it being good for the CV to say you’ve led the development of a network. But it had been a struggle and I wasn’t getting any traction.

Then, when I started really listening to what the students were telling me I started to appreciate the complexities and the busyness of their lives. So many of them have family to look after, jobs so they can pay the rent. Getting involved in setting up this network was just not worth the effort for all the additional responsibilities it would bring. So now I’m getting their perspective, taking their ideas on board. It’s early days but I’m getting more engagement.

As an analyst I was spending my days looking at data and stats about attainment and continuation. But now I’m able to appreciate the bigger picture, take a rounded view about students and the issues they are struggling with. It makes the numbers and percentages mean so much more, gives me context so I can have a real understanding of what the data means at the human level.

I did a presentation at a conference recently on how it’s so important to talk to students about what success looks like to them, about how success means different things to different students. It’s not just about that stats. For a student who is the first in family to go to university, just being there and getting the work done is success. For another, raising a child while staying the course is an achievement. Grit has enabled me to reframe what we consider to be a success. It has made my job be about more than just the numbers, to be about the lives of the student behind the numbers. It’s made it so much more meaningful and satisfying.

It’s safe to say that Grit transformed the way I think about communication, with students and with colleagues. It has given me new impetus, a new way, a better way of doing my job. It has fired me up!