Cecilia | Glendene
“Last time I had fun was hanging out with my university friends at university.
I’m a recent graduate from the University of Auckland, with a Bachelor of Human Services. I pretty much hang out with my friends usually in Korean restaurants, just eating Korean food, and just in-taking the culture as well as listening to K-pop at the same time. We usually go to the Korean restaurants after our lectures, just to see how everyone’s going with their assignments and test, as well as how we’re doing with our current future jobs that we want to do in the future, and pretty much indulgent things that we do like eating kimbap or kimchi as well as listening to K-pop at the same time. We do that just to have less stress on ourselves as well.
I grew up mostly in central but I moved recently to west-side for current job opportunities, as well as being more together with family, and what I value the most in life is friends and family. My support system in terms of going to university is my friends, rather than my parents, since my friends are always with me in every step of the way. More importantly they do know the experience themselves, since they’re currently students as well, and they’re really helpful, and they empathise with us, at the same time with how stressful we are, and how it could impact us on our own lives, at our home or at the jobs that we’re currently working at.
Yeah, it is hard sometimes to have fun while you’re focussing on the main goal, as that will help you in the future, but usually social media comes in after that. It helps us connect quickly, rather than going face to face, as we might have to study. We could just talk on the phone or either Face-time as well. We don’t really have that much fun, but we do have fun sometimes. It’s usually each month or each three months or after a long period of exams, or six months semester, pretty much.
My future is to be a youth worker, but I currently don’t have my restricted license, so that does limit the opportunities sometimes. I usually do take volunteer opportunities just so that I could get used to organisation, and then after they’ve seen my skills and my passion, then they’ll hire me, rather than actually thinking about the things they need for each of the jobs, which is mainly restricted license.
I think back when I was younger, I didn’t really have the support system at my school, in terms of getting mentoring or having mentors there. I came from a low decile school around Wesley, to Wesley Intermediate, which they didn’t have that much resources to continue with like, academic help after school. So, that’s why I wanted to work with youth, and be a mentor. That’s why I did mentoring with the, the University of Auckland for about two years, which is working with low income communities or low decile schools.”
