As someone who had been volunteering for events since high school, the opportunity to volunteer for UNSW College seemed like a good one to me.
Since the study pressure is a bit less during the first year in university, volunteering was a way of meeting new friends and collecting more ECA’s within my free time.
One of my first volunteering experiences was the Winter Festival event organised by UNSW College right in the middle of the winter season. My job was to provide the students with the tokens to buy stuff from the food stalls that were offering hot and warm food to beat the cold wind. There was live music going on alongside hands-on stations of making soupy dumplings. I had fun during the event as I had met a lot of new people who were doing the Diploma program just like me and going through the same difficult study schedules as myself. The ambience during the event didn’t make me feel like I was “working” for the event, as the kind staff members always treated us with kindness and offered us free tokens as a way of appreciating our work.
Volunteering in your first year of uni studies makes you learn resilience, patience and cooperation as you work in groups with people you are unfamiliar with, and is a great way to earn real life experience of handling situations when in a professional environment. Volunteering for UNSW College was one of the best experiences that I had in my time for Diploma because of the amazing staff members and other volunteers who make every extracurricular session so worthwhile and memorable.
Thank you to our Diploma student, who has requested to remain anonymous while sharing their story.
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