Yiyao (ICC Student Staff Leader)
Hi! I'm a new SSL from Xian, a historic city in central China. I came to Japan as an international student in April 2019.
Here's a photo I took from the plane at that time. I was so looking forward to the life here.
Since I studied pretty hard, I got accepted to the School of Culture, Media and Society (CMS) at Waseda University in the same year. I was going to become a college student in April 2020. It seemed like my exciting university life would start then. I was super excited. But unfortunately, Covid-19 blanketed the world. The situation was extremely serious. Even the entrance ceremony was delayed for a year.
Also, all the colleges in Japan had to change all their courses to online. I mean, ALL THE COURSES were online when I was a freshman. Such a painful thing! Since communicating with people and making friends is a necessity to me, I can't stand being alone all the time. So, I searched for events and to interact more with the outside world. It was that time when I found ICC, and participated in its events from time to time.
The reason that I was attracted to ICC is that I can talk with many international students like me in Waseda University. There are lots of language activities. I can practice different languages, like Japanese or English, and in the meantime, I can also make friends. I've talked to Japanese and students from other countries. Sometimes, I can meet Chinese students in the events as well. And there are lots of interesting events, about fashion, geography, earth's environment and so on.
ICC's events fulfilled my life a lot when I was a freshman, especially in this unusual period of time. I mean, I think it's pretty important for both international students and Japanese students to have a place like ICC in university, where we can interact with different cultures and practice our foreign language skills.
When I joined the events here, all the staff were so nice and kind. I gained lots of information from them. They talked about their studying life, hobbies, experiences working in ICC and so on with participants. We had such nice conversations. At that point, I really wanted to know how it would feel to be a student staff leader. Then, I applied for the position of student staff leader in ICC, and I passed, so now I'm a SSL at ICC.
At first, when I joined ICC's events as staff, I made lots of mistakes, specifically, many small mistakes. Like in the online event, I didn't share the PowerPoint smoothly or failed to get screenshot photos of everyone. Those things are all simple and I never thought I would make mistakes on them. I feel I still have a lot to learn here, because in order to make sure an event goes well, there are so many things to consider besides those basic things I mentioned. For example, coming up with good and appropriate ideas, communicating with the guest speaker, adding specific activities, thinking about possible risks, cooperating with other SSL and full-time staff, and how to do PR, like designing posters, SNS posting, much more than I thought. Therefore, I am going to continue learning here. I hope I am able to plan an interesting and attractive event someday in the future as well.
Now I'm a sophomore, and I'm still worried about my future, like all college students: the job I'm going to do after graduation, where I'm going to live, relationships with others. But at least I found something to do at Waseda University that I can spare no effort on. That's my story with ICC so far. I still feel that I was blessed to have found ICC when I was a freshman, and very happy to be a staff member here now. I'm certain that the experience here will be memorable.