Yesterday I bought my plane tickets to go back to London for my second semester. I moved to England almost five years ago to study there. But little did I know, I would not just get the education but also meet true friends, explore diverse cultures, and experience the best moments of my life.
Here I am, writing my blog from my home country and thinking about the last mouths of my university experience that awaits me. It was challenging to move to a different country without knowing what to expect. However, University of Westminster made my life so much easier from the fist days of joining its community.
More Than Classes: New World Around You
During my first year of studying, I lived in a university’s accommodation. And it was the best decision to make. I met the community of people from different countries and cultures, with different background and story. Nevertheless, we got along really quickly. We explored London together and I even visited my friend’s home cities and countries! I joined a few of the university activities that helped me to get to know people from my department.
Contemporary universities are heterogeneous institutions, housing a wide variety of student and staff who differ in several ways: ethnicity and religious backgrounds, physical and intellectual development, and level of talent.
As a result, diversity becomes the centrepiece of campus life. One key tactic for its organizational development is inclusion. Using the competence of teachers, staff, and students from various, heterogeneous groups is essential to guiding for diversity. Moreover, it is important to make their individual potentials known to best implement them for the organization’s advantage (Greenberg J., 2003).
Get Ahead: The Power of University Activities
Many students claim that the purpose of their attendance at the university is education, not socialising or clubbing. As a result, they get more free time but they also lose out on an extensive portion of their college experience. However, there are a number of benefits to all university activities.
- Making new friends with professors and peers that you would have never met if it weren’t for your study.
- Development in your field of study. Getting more experience and knowledge from students could be a good way to learn something from a different point of view.
- University events: competitions, field trips, travels, and conferences with experts that you might not be able to attend if you study alone.
- New perceptions, the upgrade of communications skills, and cooperation.
Lessons Learned, Memories Made
Studying Marketing Communication at the university I got to explore even more than just marketing. During my second year I had a chance to choose a module to learn programming. I was worried that I won’t do well, however, my professor and my classmates helped me a lot. Furthermore, after I completed the module, the university offered a new programming course by its partner organisation. I have learnt how to code in MySQL. To be honest, It was extremely difficult and I did not to well in the final project. Nonetheless, this experience helped me to understand that this is not the industry I want to connect my life with.
But I will tell you what experience did help me to find what I want. This story happened during my third year. Our professor told us about the competition the DMA Award that takes place every year. I was sceptical about it. After all, this is my final year, and the amount of work is enormous. But I decided to try anyway. Long story short: the experience and feedback that I got from the competition helped me increase my grades, find the sector I want to work in, and meet enthusiastic and amazing people.
It is important that you pick your extracurricular activities carefully. Seek a route you genuinely enjoy because leaving a team suddenly can fail to satisfy the group. All at once, avoid multitasking as it will leave you with insufficient time for all activities, including studying. Make thoughtful, responsible decisions so that you get the most out of your time at university and experience more positive feelings than stress.
References:
Greenberg, J. (2003). Diversity, the university, and the world outside. Colum. L. Rev., 103, 1610.