My Volunteering Experience at St. Aloysius College

My Volunteering Experience at St. Aloysius College On Thursday 2nd July, less than a week after signing up with Tutorfair, I was given my first volunteering task - a UCAS (Undergraduate Courses at University and College) talk at St. Aloysius College in North London. Public speaking is not one of my (many) talents, so I was a little apprehensive when confronted with a classroom full of 30 energetic Year 12 students and only one other volunteer helper, Rosa. However, once I'd introduced myself, the questions about university were fired so frequently I forgot to be nervous! To make things more manageable, we split the students into two groups. This ensured myself and Rosa were able to get to know the pupils and really provide in depth answers to their many questions, which encompassed all aspects of university life, from living at home or on campus, to how different university teaching is from school teaching. Here, I spoke about my wonderful time at LSE as a student who commutes to save money and how difficult I found the transition to university, where studying is far more independent than at school. After twenty minutes I swapped groups with Rosa and was met with the same enthusiasm from the second batch of students who were particularly interested in advice on writing personal statements, which they would be drafting the very next day at school. I gave them the only piece of advice I found valuable from my own school time: write with enough passion to remind the admissions professors why they chose to study that same discipline all those years ago. It was such a pleasure to work with the students at St. Aloysius and provide some answers to the exact same queries I had before going to university three years ago. All in all, it was an afternoon well spent and I'd recommend volunteering with Tutorfair to everyone!