Emily Crawford

An insight into Brian Jordans past, present, and future.

After two years of being TU Dublin’s Student’s Union President, Brian Jordan is moving on from college life.  

Brian was successfully voted into Presidency in the SU after completing a degree in Nutraceuticals in Health and Nutrition. Before starting this course, he did a year and a half in Trinity; studying Paediatric and General Nursing.  

“It was quite an awful time for me actually; it’s strange looking back, but at the time I was incredibly unhappy,” he said to describe his time. As he aspired to do medicine, but didn’t get the points; this led to him being unsatisfied.  

When choosing a different degree, it was down to either UCD or what was DIT at the time.  

He stated: “I wish I could say there was some divine intervention that made me choose DIT, but honestly, it was just a far easier commute for me. So, I put down Nutraceuticals on my CAO, as my singular choice, and I got in.” 

But after acquiring his degree, Brian is not sure on what path he will take after this academic year ends, saying; “I loved my course. I enjoyed the content, found it interesting, and it taught me such invaluable skills. But I don’t want to work with food or research my entire life.” 

He expresses his long-lived desire to pursue medicine, but stated: “that dream’s at least 2 years away, given the cost is 60,000 euro over 4 years / before that dream (hopefully) comes to fruition, I’ll need to work full-time somewhere; I’ll probably look at something in Communications or Pharmaceutical, or maybe a hospital laboratory.” 

While discussing his role as Chairperson in LGBTQ Society in his last year of his degree, he said that it was the most valuable thing that could have prepared him for SU President.  

“It also me the confidence to run for the position in the first place; I learned to chair meetings, make decisions, speak publicly, and just about every other skill you’d want to win an election campaign,” he fondly reminisced.  

As we looked back on his achievements during his dual term, the President was deeply passionate about the work the SU does behind the scenes.  

With all of the backlash that we see from Trinity College and their Students Union recently, Brian discussed how they opposed the fee increase for Postgraduate degrees. ”Students who would ordinarily be priced out of education, get to access it for just that little bit longer / It makes me proud to think that I directly did that.” 

He continued by saying: “We complain about seating constantly, but if we look back just 1 year; we have increased the seating on every single campus, some by hundreds of additional seats, totalling 1000+ extra seats in TU Dublin.” 

I asked about his calendar week; which he laughed about and then pondered for a bit.  

Between multiple meetings, meeting with the committee, and “answering maybe 70-80 emails” about protests, exams, and much more, it is safe to say that working to improve the lives of college students isn’t easy. 

When coming to a bittersweet end; we discussed Shauna taking his place as SU President.  

“We have such similar values, but we have such different approaches to things. I can’t wait to see what she focuses on; what things flourish under her leadership, and how people might rally behind her.” 

As Brian decided to not run for a third and final year as Preisdent – and opposes the ability to run for three years, he stated, “It’s important that students get to see different leadership figures during their time here. They might find aspects of the work I did great, but despise me in other areas that they love Shauna for. It’ll help them find out what values they support, and the type of leader they want to vote for in future.” 

To end the interview, we also touched on his love for chess and cheap wine; amongst other things. 

“I still love chess, but nobody will ever play with me until they’ve had about 17 drinks. But really, I’m quite thankful to have such a close-knit group of friends that have kept me sane over the past 2 years. We do a lot together, whether it’s randomly cycling in summer to ice skating in winter (this sounds like a cliché I’m aware); we also have a rule where I can’t talk about the SU at all around them, which has proven quite effective.” 

As we say our goodbyes to our President, Brian is making the most of his time with what he has left. Between charity fundraising, advertising student supports, and being an online/on-campus celebrity; he’s showing us everything he has in these final weeks.