My name is Sanya Sunil. I am not only a first-year student but also a Graduate+ Champion so I was fortunate enough to experience Graduate+ Week through two different lenses. I was a keen student looking forward to attending all the different events but I was also surrounded by the processes set up to produce them.
Therefore, I can say with pure honesty that Graduate+ Week should not be missed by any student.
I knew weeks ago that this week would be my busiest since I started university. There was plenty of choice but I just wanted to join every session so I circled the ones that I wanted to go to the most and made sure to attend those.
Initially, I attended the workshops that specifically focused on Academic Development such as Text Level Writing and Academic Poster Design. These sessions went over the different approaches to academic writing and provided me with specific instructions on how to handle any future assignments with different writing structures. I also attended the workshop about “Avoiding plagiarism, and using Turnitin”, which means I now know how to use the Turnitin software and how to access it on Moodle.
As the week progressed, the sessions grew more interesting. On the second day, the sessions I attended consisted mainly of meeting employers and volunteering opportunities. In these sessions, I was able to talk to employers directly and create connections building a network for myself. There were volunteering opportunities that suited almost everyone and it was important for me to find office-based volunteering opportunities that aligned with my schedule and by attending these sessions, I was able to find one.
My favourite session was on third day of Graduate+ Week. The title of the session was “Good to extraordinary: Reboot as a professional student and be a ‘Possibility Architect’”. From the moment I joined the session, Al Gurr, the session leader asked me to turn on my camera and he engaged with all the participants. The session covered the ideas of enabling thinking and disabling thinking and maintaining positive thoughts through tough situations and using that frame of mind within my assignments. This session should be a MUST for everyone next year.
On Thursday and Friday, I was not able to attend many sessions but almost all the sessions were recorded by the Graduate+ team, which means I can attend anything I missed in my own time. This will be uploaded on the OnDemand section on the Graduate+ website.
Overall, Graduate+ is an amazing opportunity but also a great resource to complete on your own time.
Graduate+ week is so good, it just cannot be missed. It only comes around twice a year so if you missed it this time, make sure to attend next time in March.