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How can students augment their leadership and collaborative abilities to create lasting change? With Skills for Success, Kayla has gained confidence in her leadership skills and is excited to continue applying them after she graduates.
Upon arriving at Curtin on the John Curtin Undergraduate Scholarship, Kayla was required to undertake a leadership development program–she chose Skills for Success. Though she found it challenging to meet a lot of new people in the workshops at first, once the activities started, she was excited to learn about a variety of topics.
Skills for Success offers a range of different workshops to help students target and develop their leadership skills. Kayla has found the networking aspect of the workshops to be the most valuable.
“I liked the networking side and learning how to interact, learning the different conflict and leadership styles and really how to engage properly with other people.”
Kayla has found that she’s already been able to apply the conflict management and public speaking skills she learned in the workshops at work, but also in her degree.
“It’s quite a social, interactive degree using a lot of the communication and speaking strategies. Trying to engage in a rapport with someone crossed over a lot.”
One of Kayla’s highlights of taking part in the Skills for Success workshops was being able to develop her skills and confidence in leadership, and applying them on her own. She has especially seen how her confidence has grown at networking events.
“When I first started uni, I had to do a networking event before I had done any networking, and I sucked–I just stood there in one spot. After the workshop, going into different uni events, I learnt how to network and move around the room and talk to people.”
One of the biggest challenges for Kayla was the transition from high school to uni. Being from Bunbury, she wasn’t only surrounded by complete strangers but was also studying in a new city. But going to a Skills for Success workshop made her realise that she wasn’t as out of place as she thought.
“When you go into the workshop, everyone’s from different backgrounds or schools or areas, but everyone chose to do that leadership workshop, so there’s that similarity. Getting used to interacting with them then helps with getting used to talking to people around uni.”
Kayla’s advice to other students thinking about getting involved in Skills for Success is to “just try it”. Though the first one might be difficult when you’re meeting so many new people, she recommends making sure to go to the next one, when everything isn’t so new, and to see how you go. She also suggests bringing a friend to your first workshop–it might make the experience a bit easier.
“The first workshop is quite overwhelming because there are a lot of different people. It’s very much a learning experience of how it works and how you interact. But bringing a friend to that first one is nice, and then you can have someone to stay with.”
After graduation, Kayla aspires to become a paediatric physiotherapist.
“I want to go back down south and go into paediatrics. I really want to focus on paediatric physiotherapy and my own clinic. The closest paediatric physiotherapy place to us down south is half an hour away, so I’d like to have my own little kids clinic down there.”
