Tina
Graduate School of Economics
ICC Student Staff Leader
November 2019 – March 2023
After four years of working at the ICC, it becomes hard for me to imagine a new life without it. I am so glad that during my life in Waseda, I was able to meet the warmest and most passionate people, learn practical skills and develop my sense of responsibility here. Since it’s time to say goodbye to my ICC family, I would like to look back at this precious experience and give you some idea about how working as a Student Staff Leader (SSL) is and what I learned as an SSL.
Why be an SSL?
Lots of SSLs found out about the ICC from the events. So did I.
Tracking back to the spring of 2017, when I first started my life at Waseda, I was curious about university life and excited about this journey of study abroad but not so confident with my language skills. During orientation, SSLs’ energetic presentation about the ICC in fluent English and Japanese left a deep impression in me, and the various events ICC provided also made me interested in this organization.
In the first couple of semesters, I participated in different ICC events. It was always full of surprise when opening the ICC News emails. The saddest thing was to see that the date of the event I wanted to join completely overlapped with my classes. But it happened sometimes. ICC events really enriched my life, helped me make friends with local and international students and let me explore unknown fields in life. In each of the events, the student staff always looked so cool and professional. However, I did not apply to be one of them until two years later, because I thought I was not qualified enough to help others and that both my English and Japanese were not good enough. In 2019, when I came back from study abroad, I saw the SSL recruiting information and I felt that this time I was ready. And, luckily, I became one of the SSLs at the ICC.
Events I took part in
Although making events is just part of the duties of an SSL, it is the most important one and the way most students know about the ICC. I have been involved in different kinds of events including my own original events, ICC regular events, and events proposed by people outside of the ICC.
As for my original events, I produced the Railway Lovers Café; Talk Session with former figure skater Machida Tatsuki; Mexico Culture Night; and Field Trip to Tokyo Stock Exchange and Waseda University Nihonbashi Campus. Creating our own events is exciting, but sometimes I struggled with the balance between the feasibility and the enjoyment of the event. The concept of “intercultural communication × things I am interested in” usually saved me from that situation. It also expanded my understanding of intercultural communication, which is more than internationalism. For example, as a big fan of figure skating, I invited Mr. Machida to talk about the role change from an athlete to a researcher. The intercultural element there is between different fields and the way people change their mindset, which is a very important part of intercultural communication.
Posters of my original events (ICC)
Due to the pandemic, I was in charge of lots of online events as well. It was quite a challenge to explore the way of making online events and it was not easy to change all the events back to in-person ones as well. I still remember the days we worked hard on figuring out how to conduct online events through various meeting platforms. We also had discussions and trials on the details of online events, such as the best timing of starting breakout sessions, the way to include everyone in one screenshot, and the way to make each event post on social media look different. When it became possible to hold in-person events again, I was so excited to finally meet the participants face to face. It was also a challenge for me to share the experience of operating offline events with my Kouhai (SSLs who started later than me) because I was not so experienced either. The trust of my fellows in the ICC encouraged me to grow up faster and make more efforts.
Making events from scratch by ourselves and the feeling of achievement when receiving positive feedback from participants are the most interesting parts of this job. It is also an opportunity for me to develop different skills such as business Japanese, leadership, time management, how to deal with unexpected happenings and so on. Because of that, I never got bored in preparing and operating events.
-
- Scenes from my events (ICC photos)
What I learned as an SSL
The most important thing I learned from working as an SSL is responsibility. It is not only the responsibility towards the events and the tasks I was in charge of, but also the responsibility from the sense of belonging to this organization and the desire to make it a better place.
Personally, before coming to the ICC, I did not have much experience in belonging to an organization (eg, student clubs) that includes students with different backgrounds and school years. I entered ICC when I was a third-year. As a result, some of my sempais (SSLs who started before me) here were much younger than me, which doesn’t happen very often in a normal Japanese situation. This mismatching of my school year and the years of experience at the ICC made me, and maybe other SSLs as well, confused about my position here at the beginning. Gradually this confusion disappeared, because I realized that no matter the age or years of experience, all SSLs are carrying the same responsibility to provide better events, to bring more creative ideas, and to make ICC a better place. As the time I worked here got longer, I felt an even larger responsibility. This is not an exogenesis change because someone started calling me Sempai, but an endogenous one. Seeing lots of SSLs that used to help me and teach me basic office skills graduate in the past three years, I realized that it was my turn to share what I learned from them and from my experience to others so that they can grow their skills in a more efficient way. Probably this is what is called inheriting.
I am sure that this learning of responsibility will be a treasure and a strength in my future life.
Last but not least
ICC staff (photo by ICC)
I would like to thank all of my coworkers at the ICC, my nice and supportive sempais, my peer fellows who grew up as SSLs together, my kouhai (SSLs starting after me) who trusted me all the time, and the full-time staff who are the backstage heroes helping me achieve my goals. I would also like to thank the guests, the participants and everyone who I met over the past three years.
Undoubtably, being a part of the ICC is an unforgettable part of my university life and it is because of the people there that made this experience even more colorful and special.
I hope the ICC will keep improving, and I am excited to see even more interesting and creative intercultural communication events produced by ICC. For those who participated or are going to participate in ICC events, I also hope those events will be the best memories of your lives at Waseda.
