“Was it the best decision of my life to become a student active? I’m not sure, but I’m going to tell you why it was one of the most important things in my life.
I was a student active for four years in different kind of roles. Four very active and sometimes also very busy years. You might ask why on earth? Why use your time and energy in the board of your student union? You won’t even get paid. What does it give to you? Or does it give you anything? Well the cliche answer would sound something like learning new things, getting new experiences and meeting awesome people. It’s all that, but so much more. It’s a lot of concrete skills like working in projects, training, lobbying, communications, how to motivate people, leadership skills and even credit points.
The benefit of working as a student active is that you get to do so much different things during your year in the board. You can find the skills you want to to promote and work thing them. I for example, suffered from a horrible performance anxiety. Even speaking to more than five people was hard for me. Nowadays I’ve spoken successfully to more than 500 persons at once. I’m still nervous, but Laureamko gave me performance training and experience and taught me that you can survive through pretty much anything.
The best thing I got from my Laureamko years were the amazing people I got to work with. I’ve had the chance to build an awesome network of people. I’ve got a lot of great friends, a mentor, a great boss, my roommates and a lot of people who I can call if I need help with anything.
Without Laureamko my student life would have been a lot more boring.”
-Sini Heino
The writer was supposed to join Laureamko’s board for 2 months, ended up being a student active for over 4 years.
Sini was Laureamko’s board member 2012 and 2013 and the president of the board for the year 2014. She now works for student union Helga as a specialist of advocacy and influencing.