Best Job @ UBC : Student Ambassador

Being a Student Ambassador is a pretty sweet on-campus job to have. So what exactly is a Student Ambassador, you may ask. Here's how it works:

Student Recruitment and Advising UBC is the office in charge of, basically, recruiting and advising new students! The office does a variety of things, including sending Recruiters off to University/College Fairs all over the world, and receiving students from all over the world here at UBC. Even before becoming an Ambassador I got to work with the Office when I went to Mexico to give a presentation about my UBC experience. How could I have rejected a free plane ticket home? I didn't, of course, and being part of that event actually made me aware of the existence of the Campus Tours. Many of the Ambassadors travel with Recruiters like that, especially if the Recruiter is going to their home town. It's so prospective students hear from an actual UBC student, makes it more real.

Touring the University of your choice as a prospective students was somewhat of a novel concept to me, and I never thought going to visit universities was such a big deal. Everyone says "What? So you didn't even visit before coming here?" Nope. The webpage pictures were enough (my goal, by the way, is to appear on a student handbook or the webpage or something, just like laughing and hanging out with 'friends' wearing a UBC hoodie. Someday) I hadn't even been to Canada. But apparently touring around is a hugely popular thing to do here and in the States. I mean, you will be spending the next four years of your life here, so you might as well...

So imagine you're a prospective student. You want to know everything about UBC, the webpage is just not enough and you want to see the real thing. So you go to you.ubc.ca and register for one of the completely-free offered-every-single-day-of-the-week tours (if you register for Friday tours I could potentially be your tour guide!) and then come to UBC on that day. You get a 15 min presentation by an Advisor and, after that, the lovely SAs take the groups on a 1 hour 45 minute tour of the University. We showcase the best of our University, cover everything you wanted to know about the school, and are honest about the more negative aspects too.

The cool thing about being an Ambassador is also the slow transition that's incorporated into the training process. It's not like you start doing tours right away. You slowly ease into the tour vibe through the training process. Vale and I were hired at the same time (Vale and I do everything together. This deserves its own post later on...) and we spent like one whole term training. So that means we go on other tours, see what they're like, and then Tag-team, which means giving every other stop in a tour, the other half being given by a more experienced SA. We also reviewed the Wiki, or the online portal where all the documents pertaining to the tours are stored. This contains everything you could possibly ever want to know about UBC. Really.

The average tour: Brock Hall>Student Recreation Centre>Student Union Building>Bookstore>Main Mall & University Blvd.> Trek Cairn> LS Klink> Longhouse> Place Vanier> Nitobe Gardens> Asian Centre> International House> Flag Pole> Chan Centre> Libraries. Wheeeew! Now that's what I call a tour.

My favourite things about being an Ambassador (not ranked in order of importance):

1. Having a badge with my name! Yes, a real badge. Not like a sticker, but a metal badge.

2. The Student Ambassador meetings. They are quite awesome. We have meetings every two weeks. We do things such as, but not limited to: get updates on tour information, talk about the upcoming weeks, play games related to things such as time management, each delicious snacks prepared by the Seniors, get to know each other better, go over the tour routes, FatQs (Frequently Asked Tough Questions), practice avoiding the 'likes' and 'ums', ambassador of the week. Things planned for this term (can't wait!): Visit the Beaty Biodiversity Museum, visit Triumf, visit the MOA. Last meeting we got a tour of the First Nations House of Learning, which is one of the tour stops, to get a better idea of the things that go on here. And meeting before last we got a tour or the CSI (not Crime Scene Investigation, Brock Hall has no place for crimes, only for construction.)
[Some interesting updates on what's happening at UBC (which only UBC people will understand): now every single first year student is guaranteed housing provided they accept the offer of admission before the deadline, regardless of their place of origin. Previously, anyone living within the Lower Mainland, even if three hours away, had to find alternate housing, so this is great news. Rits will now become part of Totem, and besides that ~500 new beds will be added to Totem from the new constructions, which by the way look pretty cool - they're suite style residences with two rooms sharing a common bathroom (versus 35 people sharing a bathroom in the other Totem Houses) AND another thing: no one above first year will be allowed to live in Rits, Totem or Vanier now, except for Residence Advisors, Residence Life Managers, etc.]

3.  Gaining so many transferable skills! Public speaking, check. Organizational skills, check. Time management, check. Communication skills, check. Peer-to-peer interaction, check.

4. The other Student Ambassadors, the Seniors and our Bosses. We're talking here about a pretty diverse and fun group of people that make the job interesting, engaging and flexible.

5. Walking around campus (exercise of the week when all else fails) answering students' questions and really making a difference in helping them decide whether UBC's the right place for them by sharing personal insights and experiences.

6. Having a flexible, well-paid job (this is a Work Learn/Work Study position, which means the wages are subsidized by student fees, making them higher than the minimum wage. If you become part of Work Learn/Work Study you make between $13 and $21 dollars an hour, usually ~ $16) that doesn't conflict with excelling at everything else we're involved in, such as academics and extracurriculars.