"hello! do you need any help?"
...
"do i?"
i went to peer support program at monash caulfield this morning. i decided to volunteer for this program to help new students who are new to monash, or may be to melbourne. i never expected helping these peeps could be so fun and exciting, if not funny. well, four years a go i was exactly in their shoes ,so i perfectly understand how it felt; happy, excited, jittery,clueless, bemused, any adjectives in the whole dictionary, you name it!
i and other vietnamese girl peer leader sat on the registration desk to greet the new students. we were really eager to say hi to every new students who passed by in front of our table. some of them were very friendly, some asked general question such as enrollment or unit adding, some of them asked only God knows the answer question {well, not really} and some of them even looked at us in horror as if they were looking at ghosts!
what we practically did were actually welcoming them, asked if they found any hard times doing the enrollment. if they did, then we refered them to right person. if they were pretty much done with those things, we then encouraged them to have a cup of coffee or tea together. then while they were enjoying their meals, some of peer support leaders would then had a bit chit chat with them. we usually started with a bit of introduction {i can't remember how many times i said things like this today: "hi, welcome to monash! my name is vveen, nice meeting you. i'm doing master of business system. what major are you doing and so on and so on.." we offered them helps if needed, such as accomodation, transportation or grocery things. it's pretty much basic things.
the most amusing was when i chatted with whole bunch of indonesian students. i explained them so many thing they inquiried like, culture issues, foods, mobile phone plan option, explained to them what 'cap' means, uni exams and assignments. and just like i hated it when the lecturers and the librarians kept mentioning about plagiarism and references, i eventually had to share it to them because i know in indonesia plagiarism is not a big issue and reference or citations are not big deal. see, even things that we thought are very ordinary or even never been considered as a knowledge, surprisingly for some people could be very helpful and useful.
it's true: and the great thing in 'give & take' is to take, but the greatest thing is to give.
and do you know the best part of being peer support leader, other than free monash t-shirt and free lunch? i don't have any idea before how many new friends i've met in just less than a week. and they're from everywhere in the world! isn't that fascinating? some of them are wackos, control-freak, and even gay :p but they're all nice friends.
i'll be missing another fun uni activity. damn...damn...damn!
i and other vietnamese girl peer leader sat on the registration desk to greet the new students. we were really eager to say hi to every new students who passed by in front of our table. some of them were very friendly, some asked general question such as enrollment or unit adding, some of them asked only God knows the answer question {well, not really} and some of them even looked at us in horror as if they were looking at ghosts!
what we practically did were actually welcoming them, asked if they found any hard times doing the enrollment. if they did, then we refered them to right person. if they were pretty much done with those things, we then encouraged them to have a cup of coffee or tea together. then while they were enjoying their meals, some of peer support leaders would then had a bit chit chat with them. we usually started with a bit of introduction {i can't remember how many times i said things like this today: "hi, welcome to monash! my name is vveen, nice meeting you. i'm doing master of business system. what major are you doing and so on and so on.." we offered them helps if needed, such as accomodation, transportation or grocery things. it's pretty much basic things.
the most amusing was when i chatted with whole bunch of indonesian students. i explained them so many thing they inquiried like, culture issues, foods, mobile phone plan option, explained to them what 'cap' means, uni exams and assignments. and just like i hated it when the lecturers and the librarians kept mentioning about plagiarism and references, i eventually had to share it to them because i know in indonesia plagiarism is not a big issue and reference or citations are not big deal. see, even things that we thought are very ordinary or even never been considered as a knowledge, surprisingly for some people could be very helpful and useful.
it's true: and the great thing in 'give & take' is to take, but the greatest thing is to give.
and do you know the best part of being peer support leader, other than free monash t-shirt and free lunch? i don't have any idea before how many new friends i've met in just less than a week. and they're from everywhere in the world! isn't that fascinating? some of them are wackos, control-freak, and even gay :p but they're all nice friends.
i'll be missing another fun uni activity. damn...damn...damn!
posted by vveen @ 7/04/2006 06:43:00 PM
1 Comments:
That's a really nice thing to do, helping out new students like this!
I actually went to Monash in 1985, and I found it so big, cold and very, very lonely. I was never happy there and I ended up dropping out before trying agaon a year later but it wasn't any better.
Finally I did complete my degree as a mature age student at Swinburne in Hawthorn.
Back in 1985 apart from some counselling and religious services, they had virtually nothing in the way of help programs for people like me, who might, for various reasons, find it hard to cope - but I think that's all changed now. In 1985, there were, for example, no programs to help disabled people and they had to pay a small fortune for note-taking in lectures & tutorials but now the university provides these free - that kind of thing.
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