LIFE LONG LEARNING

Life Long Learning is being able to foster the continuous development of knowledge and skills needed for the workplace or personal fulfillment. Being an AmeriCorps VISTA working with high school and college students, I was constantly challenged to learn new skills and knowledge to be able to solve the problems I encountered in the workplace.

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Being able to be a good listener as a leader is important. It allows you to build a connection with others. While working as an AmeriCorps VISTA, I continuously learned knew ways to become a good listener. Students would often confide in me their concerns and worries about school or their personal life. I worked with a student who became particularly attached to me. She felt that she could talk to me like a big sister. Maintaining a professional relationship, while connecting with this student was a new skill I had to learn. 

This student came to me with a problem. She was a first generation student who was enrolled in school as a computer science major. She was in her second semester of her freshman year, and found herself feeling very overwhelmed and alone. She felt too uneducated to be apart of a university community, but too educated to be a part of her family and community. As the semester went on, her interest in her major started to fade. She found she wanted to switch majors, but did not know how to handle the process. Her parents wanted her to transfer to community college since that is what they felt she should have done in the first place. She wanted to stay where she was, but felt conflicted with her parents’ ideas. She was afraid to tell her parents that she felt she had failed, so she turned to me instead.

The first thing I did when she came to me with her problem was to listen. By listening I was able to come up with a plan for her. Although this was not a part of my job, I went through the process of changing her major with her. I showed her what resources were available to her to give her more support, and reassured her that what she was feeling was not abnormal.

Listening to her worries and concerns taught me that being a good listener and sometimes stepping outside your job description to build relationships is important. With the work I want to do in helping first generation students achieve college success, I will continuously learn how to approach situations just like this. The student is now a junior, and is much happier in what she is studying. Although I do not work with her anymore, I know that I will continue to encounter students just like her through my work.