Rachel: A student's perspective
When I read about LIFT OFF to Success the first thing I noticed (being a poor student) was that accommodation, meals and travel were all inclusive for the week! I couldn’t wait to sign up! When I arrived at the West Park Centre and walked into a room of about 60 students, though, I began to realise what I’d signed myself up for.
As a Student Mentor (or Dementor, as we were affectionately known) it was my job to chaperone the students and make sure everyone was safe, well and on time for all their activities and college and university visits. Of course, as a student myself I was also able to pass on the knowledge I had gained since coming to university. Although it could be a tad stressful at times it was great fun.
The students got to join in the activities alongside the pupils which involved all sorts of weird and wonderful things, including dressing up for a mock court room scenario, welding, designing our own robots and performing a song on stage. Not only did this keep everyone entertained, but it also gave us a great chance to get to know the pupils better and allowed them to mix and get to know each other while being able to see what university or college had to offer them. These visits showed the pupils how different college and university are to school and allowed them to ask questions about the various courses and specialist subjects on offer, as well as questions on university life as a whole.
On the last day we had a graduation ceremony where posters made by the pupils of their week were displayed. Some of the new graduates even gave speeches on how they had found LO2S. Hearing the speeches made me realise how rewarding my time as a mentor had been. The pupils talked about how they had had little interest or knowledge about colleges and universities at the beginning of the week but their experience on LO2S had helped them realise that attending university or college is something they were able to do and that they would like to pursue. It was great to see how the general outlook on education had changed in such a positive way!
Since my week at LIFT OFF I occasionally still hear from some of the students filling me in on their exam results and choices for their next year and which courses they are considering taking up, as well as the burning question – when are they getting a reunion?! All these decisions are ones which they hadn’t really considered until they participated in LO2S. It is this which makes me realise how worthwhile the LO2S project really is and which makes me even more excited about the next one!
