7th August 2020
By Bernadette Waddelove
What is working for APS like? What do we do with our time? Today we’re taking a look at an event filled week in the life of our SSO!
Friday PM
It’s 8pm on a dark February night when I bound happily into the building where we are having our StratCon. Short for, you guessed it, Strategy Conferences, these are a weekend’s worth of meetings which we hold every 3 months or so to discuss what has happened and where we’re going. One team member hosts while the rest gather from around the country, and the first evening is spent relaxing as people drift in at different times after their working weeks. At around 9pm our Communications Director arrives with her gorgeous 4 month old baby, and there is a low happy hubbub of noise and we all catch up with each other’s lives. Once the discussion turns to deep philosophy, I call it a day and head to bed!
Saturday
The day starts with the arrival of the very talented Maria, who has given up her weekend to work on our continued professional development. The writing tasks successfully avoided, I watch everyone else’s quick brains at work. The day flies past in graphs and brainstorming, before culminating in an evening meal where our lovely Communications Director shows us all how to eat a lot of food and remain as thin as a rake. A talent I sadly do not possess!
Sunday
The morning is filled with brainstorming and planning for the future, before finishing in a late lunch. Food at these weekends are always fantastic, and this one is no exception as our lovely host feeds us her homemade goods. Various people, myself included, finish in a rush and walk at a brisk pace to the nearest train station to head back to our various locations. This time, rather than heading home, I’m staying the night with one of my brother’s who lives in nearby Birmingham so i can continue my trip to Bristol the following day.
Monday
After a happy morning cooing over my new nephew, I head to the train station for Bristol where I’m scheduled to give a talk to Bristol Pro-Life Feminist Society. I tidy up my talk on the train, and am met at the train station by a lovely member of their exec who very kindly takes my suitcase for me. If anyone ever had a burning need to know, I can confirm that Bristol has a lot of hills!
My talk focuses on how to be Pro-Life is to be Pro-Woman, and also looks at how to help pregnant students. Top tip for other universities, they had cake!
Giving talks to such a courageous and lovely group of people is always a privilege, and this one is no different. Afterwards I head back to one of the exec member’s house and we eat dinner while chatting late into the evening. One of the best parts of this job is getting to meet and spend time with such amazing people. Once again, a massive thanks to her and all of the Bristol exec for such hospitality!
Tuesday
After some breakfast, I head to the train station to continue with my onward journey. This time it is to London and to an event on assisted suicide in Parliament, hosted by SPUC. As it’s Shrove Tuesday, I ensure that I find some pancakes en route! After arriving in London, I head to our Chief Executive’s flat (Mads’) and crack on with some work before heading to Parliament.
The event is well attended and, after queuing in the rain to get through security, I squeeze into the room and try and (pretty unsuccessfully) melt into the wall. Staffers and MPs came and went, as bells rang and yet another vote happened in the House. The presentation on Palliative Care rather than Assisted Suicide was by a doctor with extensive experience both in this field, and around the world – including having been involved in containing the ebola outbreak. He starts the talk by clarifying that he is not necessarily pro-life, before showing through his presentation that palliative care should always scientifically be the answer to end of life care.
Wednesday
A day without anything scheduled (finally!), I prepare my workshop for the upcoming SPUC Youth Conference while the evening gives me the opportunity to meet up with an old university friend. I jump on tubes like a native (or so I like to think) before my phone crashes and I end up having to find my friend more by luck than by anything else. For those who know me, it’s become a running joke that technology and I have had a bad year together!
Thursday
Mads and I head to a pro-life symposium near London, where she gives a presentation on APS’ strategy and the most effective and successful ways to engage in pro-life activity in an university context. We chat with various people involved in the movement, both nationally and internationally, before I head off to stay with an aunt who lives in the vicinity. 
I charge around the London stations with my massive pro-life placards, my suitcase full of items I need for our stall on the weekend, and my backpack with all my clothes from the week. Charging around London stations in rush hour, laden down? No problem I think, as I get stuck in the barriers and rapidly become deeply unpopular. Nailed it.
Friday
I leave my aunt’s mid afternoon to head to the SPUC Youth Conference, with my sister picking me up from Bedford’s station en route. I re-comprise my pack horse role, with the added items my sister brought from home, but thankfully avoid getting stuck in anything this time. The SPUC Youth Conference is always great fun as around 150 young pro-lifers from all around the country converge in one place. I have a great time talking to loads of students and other members of the pro-life movement, as well as old friends. The stall successfully set up, it’s quiz time. My voice decides that it’s been overworked this week and promptly drops a couple of octaves so I sit it out and watch on in great amusement before everyone heads to bed (or not, as the case might be!) buzzing about the weekend to come.
Saturday
Voice only partially recovered, our lovely HR Director arrives for the weekend and Mads kindly offers to share the 2 workshops APS are running with me. The day passes in a flurry of networking, social media updates, interviews, and giving workshops. I feel incredibly proud of our leader from Nottingham Students for Life, Julia, who gives a short general talk about her year of being banned from university for running the pro-life society (successfully overturned). There are many poignant talks, and many laughs with friends, before the day culminates in a ceilidh.
Sunday
The morning once again flies by until its lunch time in a flurry of talks and coffee breaks, and the SPUC Youth Conference is sadly over for another year. We pack away the stall, and say our fond farewells, before cramming into my sister’s car. She drops Mads off at the station, and Madeleine at her house, before we drive west into the sunset for home. Plans for tomorrow? A day or two off!
*(Nb. the week to week workload of the SSO varies considerably. This is not indicative of a normal week.)
