By Tiffany Liu
As the co-op student experience associate this term at Co-operative Education (CE), I focused on the various elements of the student experience and looked for ways to improve it. This included writing biweekly blog posts about topics relating to co-op as well as attending co-op student council meetings to better understand the relationship between CE, FEDS and student societies.
The most meaningful project for me this term was publishing these blog posts for the Co-operative Education website. These posts are a way for co-op students to learn more about CE, like the various roles at Tatham Centre that most students don’t get to see. I discovered that there are aspects to CE that I wasn't familiar with; which means other co-op students wouldn't be familiar with them either.
I have really enjoyed writing these posts as it has allowed me to be creative with what I was interested in learning. I was able to meet people in various roles and ask them questions to learn more about what they do for students. This experience has really shown me all the hard work that goes on behind the scenes to continuously improve students’ experience with co-op. Through the posts that I have written, I hope to show the various ways CE is here to help students. As well, I hope students can learn more about interview day services, how to get an “outstanding” on their term reports, co-op connections and much more!
A Final Thought
It’s been a long road but I have finally reached the end of my fourth and final co-op term at Waterloo.
I want to take this opportunity to share what I have learned through my experience. Being in the Health Studies program, it was tough to find a job related to my field. I constantly worried about accepting jobs that were unrelated to my program and wondered whether it was a good decision. However, I have learned that, although securing a job-related in my field would be great, regardless of the job there is always something to be learned with each job. My co-op jobs may not have been in a health-related field, but they are the jobs that have provided me with the transferrable skills that I will need to obtain a career in my field post-graduation.
Lastly, I would like to thank Gabrielle Smith, the faculty relations manager of engineering for all the support and guidance she has given me this past term. I’ve met some wonderful people here at CE and hope to keep in touch!
