What is a Durham Student Ambassador?
A Durham Student Ambassador (DSA) is someone who works to deliver high quality interactions with students, teachers, parents, etc. Long-story-short, DSAs are some of the best people you will ever meet. (Genuinely!)
The goal of a DSA is basically to inform prospective students about how life at Durham is. We do this so that you know what to expect at Durham and are suitably prepared for university.
What do I do?
I am currently a first year here at Durham. I have only been a DSA for about 5 months but I think I have done quite a bit. The first thing I ever did as DSA was a blog. Blog requests happen quite often. Although, I have done a range of things as a DSA:
- UCAS fairs – where I got to speak to loads of potential students and answer any questions they had about Durham;
- UK uni search – basically the same as a UCAS fair;
- Residentials – where potential students are invited to come to Durham to learn more about the university and have a taste of life as a student here;
- School events – where students, usually below year 12, come to Durham and learn about Durham and the university, as a whole, as well as different courses that you can do at university.
There are also events like post-offer visit days, tours and loads more. As a DSA, I get to pick how often I work. This is amazing because if I have loads of work I need to get done, I can just choose not to do any events and there will be another DSA that would be able to do this.
My top 3 reasons for being a DSA
You get paid for it
This is important because being a student at uni can be rough on your wallet, so to be able to just choose when you work, doing what you actually want to do and getting paid for it, is really great.
You get to give back to others
I really love helping people. As a DSA, I feel like I am helping students get into top universities – like Durham – so it feels extremely fulfilling to me. It just feels great to help people who were in your situation not long ago, giving advice I wish I could have heard beforehand.
It looks great on your CV
As you get into university and progress, you will find it necessary to have a good CV if you are looking for job prospects after university. Being a DSA gives me something valuable to put on my CV, to make me look more attractive to the companies I am thinking of applying to, for either programmes or work.
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