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How can Curtin students develop their soft skills outside of class? With the help of Curtin Extra, Charlotte has been able to enhance her leadership skills alongside her degree and is looking forward to applying them after graduation.
Upon entering uni, Charlotte was granted the Julia Gillard Women in Leadership scholarship. As part of this, she was required to undertake a certain amount of volunteering. That led her to Curtin Extra, where she became a Curtin Leader and completed Skills for Success leadership courses.
Curtin Extra allows students to gain recognition for their contributions through approved programs. Through Curtin Extra, Charlotte not only developed her soft skills but also met people she might not have met before joining.
“I would describe Curtin Extra as very community-based. I made lots of friends in both Skill for Success and Curtin Leaders, which once again opens your field and your opportunities.”
While Skills for Success provides more generalised workshops on leadership skills (e.g. self-awareness, goal setting and collaboration), Curtin Leaders is a more focused program that allows participants to apply their developed skills for social change.
Charlotte has found Curtin Leaders helpful, especially for honing one different aspect of leadership per week, developing it, and reflecting on what she learned. Holding an individual ten-minute presentation at the end of the program allowed her to visualise what she had learned over the semester.
“I think through doing that, it made me realise how much I actually had to talk about, and how much that we had actually done over the semester.”
Now that Charlotte’s completed 70 hours of Curtin Extra involvement and achieved Tier 3 recognition, she feels she’s improved specifically in her speeches. She reflects on her first speech:
“I think when I was saying it, I was really nervous not to get too personal. I think I was thinking too much about how I was presenting rather than what I was saying.”
But by the time she got to the end of the semester, she felt far more comfortable speaking in the environment with people she knew better than she did in the beginning.
“The second one felt a lot more relaxed; everyone knew who I was. It was a change from being nervous to being more confident.”
A large part of achieving Curtin Extra recognition is completing the reflections. Charlotte stresses the importance of reflecting, finding it a lot more helpful and enjoyable than she anticipated.
“I think it’s really useful because it forces you to think about your strengths and weaknesses, which I think not many people actually think about, which will help you move forward.”
Charlotte’s advice for other students trying to stay motivated in undertaking a Curtin Extra program alongside their studies is to find something to look forward to in each session.
“I’d really look forward to seeing the two friends that I was there with. It put me in a good mood, and I would be more susceptible to listening.”
She also emphasises the importance of not putting too much pressure on herself to not stress over the reflection part of Curtin Extra. She preferred to give herself a certain amount of time to complete her reflection, and if the following week she realised she had more to add, she’d add it to the current week instead.
“I wasn’t going to go back and waste time doing it. Even though it’s valuable to reflect, I don’t think it’s valuable to stress about it.”
As Charlotte progresses through uni and Curtin Extra, she is excited to complete her physio degree and looks forward to what lies ahead.
