Nidhi is a first year ambassador and final year Pharmacy student at the Medway campus.
I am Nidhi, a final year pharmacy student. This was the first year I worked as an outreach ambassador. I have been fortunate to be on different sites such as Mid Kent College and Brompton Academy and to work with different age groups from year 7 to mature students of various ages. It’s been a two-way learning process where I have been able to share my experience and knowledge with school children and college students to help them progress academically: I have talked about the importance of higher education, shared interview tips and demonstrated how to be professional. Importantly, I also learnt a great deal of discipline from the professionals I worked with such as school teachers and college staff. I was inspired by how vital their role is in shaping and laying foundations for students. I learnt to appreciate all their efforts, no matter how small, to encourage each individual to excel in the field they are interested in.
One of the most exciting opportunities was presented at a college where I was an interviewer helping students with mock interviews, to prepare them for real apprenticeship and higher education interviews. My interview tips and experience gathered from several job and university interviews really helped the students to gain confidence. It was fascinating as I am usually on the other end of the desk, being interviewed myself. This gave me a different perspective and helped me reflect on my interview performances retrospectively.
I have benefited from meeting other ambassadors, doing different courses on the various campuses of Kent University, who have shared their experience of student life; this was enlightening, because pharmacy is a very isolated course and meeting students from other courses gave me an insight into how varied the courses and university experiences can be. The student ambassador role also made me appreciate the importance of teamwork and supporting each other. For example, distributing the workload during an event and offering car rides to each other if working on the same event alleviated concerns about the task.
Being an ambassador brought me out of my comfort zone. Every outreach event was different. I developed a distinct skill set on each occasion and each job opportunity I said yes to demanded new expertise. The skills I gained from this role will help in my career as it has made me a confident individual, it has improved my communication skills and helped me be a punctual person.