By Sonali Raghunath
“Don't be afraid. Just ask. There are tons of resources on campus, its so stressful believe me you are not the first, they were in your position once, just ask and help yourself grow up” - Yueting
Meet our spotlight leader, Yueting Zhao, one of our Global Gopher Experiences
(GGE) and Culture Corps (CC) leaders who has been working with ISSS for the past 3 years. She is originally from China and currently a Junior majoring in Genetics in the College of Biological Sciences.
Yueting joined as a GGE leader after the welcome week program event since she identified it as a platform to share ideas. Her very first project was about Teaching Chinese Culture - Chinese Asian Philosophy which was very challenging due to her academic pressure and load, but she managed to complete the project in the following months.
She has also been part of other projects including the Culture Corps Career STAR program as a student leader and the International Student Outreach program. The Culture Corps Career program is a joint peer mentor program with ISSS to develop and cultivate networking and connections with students and an International Outreach program was designed to develop alternative ways to navigate University and provide resources as an international student.
All of her projects had a good impact on the international student community by providing them with an option to learn and understand Chinese culture and philosophies, learning about their career paths and improving communication skills, and increasing involvement in meaningful discussions to support their transition to a different culture and country.
Through her projects, Yueting learnt that practice was important to build confidence and improve her speaking skills, and it was a learning process for her. She also mentioned that the projects were challenging but assisting students to promote communication indirectly helped her leadership skills and get practical experience in organizing small events. In general, her experiences helped build her confidence step by step throughout different projects. Yueting also shares that teamwork, confidence and communication are her top three skills that she gained as being part of the Culture Corps projects. In her own words, “Teamwork is what GGE and CC is all about. I really enjoy the atmosphere of GGE, all the skills are only for our personal development but working together with people with similar interests and experiences they can share more practical experiences of what they learned and what can be improved and you can provide feedback as well”.
She emphasizes confidence as a key skill in all the projects and believes that projects always build the confidence level to boost the ability to finish and communicate with your peers and mentor. These are some key takeaways from Yueting as she is and being part of GGE and CC. We appreciate all the efforts through her projects and CC is happy to have more leaders like Yueting.
About the author
Sonali Raghunath is a Culture Corps Graduate Consultant working with Advocacy projects with ISSS. She is a 4th year PhD student at the Food Science and Nutrition Department from CFANS and she is originally from Chennai, India. She has been working in editing and interviewing students who are GGE leaders and Culture Corps consultants with a goal to highlight their skills and impacts of their projects to a wider audience as part of her Advocacy project.
