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Age: 20 Education: University Student Location: UQ St Lucia Occupation: Part-time sales assistant at Myers. |
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| Cautious | Passionate | Studious | Quiet |
|---|---|---|---|
- Maintain a healthy balance between my work and my studies
- Meet some new friends on campus
- I don’t know anyone that stays on campus as late as me.
- It’s difficult for me to find new friends who share the same interests at my university. Alice finishes her afternoon tutorials and heads to the library to study. At 6pm she gos to her lecture where she sits alone and focuses on the lecture content. After the lecture is finished Alice walks back to her car to travel home. Her car is parked on the far side of campus and so she has to walk a long distance in the dark. Alice has always been uncomfortable being alone and outside at night, and so she shies away from any other individuals who cross her path. Her late-night trek to her car is one of the worst parts of her week. Once she finally reaches her car, she gets inside and feels a sense of relief. “I want to be the very best that I can be, like no one ever was, and I’m willing to accept that I need help to do that. Finding it is my real test.”
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Age: 22 Education: Postgraduate university student Location: UQ St Lucia Occupation: None |
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| Perfectionist | Serious | Curious | Competitive |
|---|---|---|---|
- Find the someone that can mentor me for free.
- I often get bored when I am not being challenged.
- I find it difficult to find a mentor that has the right skills for what I’m interested in.
- It is too expensive for me to pay for a private tutor. Frank completes a large piece of assessment and finds that he is some new spare time to spend. He has become increasingly interested in programming recently and is interested to develop his skills in this field. He searches around campus for someone that might be able to help him, but is unable to afford any of the private tutors that he finds. He resolves to using online courses to self-teach himself Java. He spends a few hours trying to understand the fundamentals, but struggles as he is unable to comprehend the fundamental theories required. Frank becomes frustrated at his lack of progress and gives up. “I believe what goes around, comes around.”
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Age: 43 Education: PhD in History Location: UQ St Lucia Occupation: Associate Lecturer |
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| Generous | Superstitious | Inquisitive | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
- I want to be a part of a greater community.
- I find it difficult to help strangers out in public, since most people aren’t willing to ask for help.
- My busy schedule working at university means that I can’t commit to helping people out on a regular basis.
James spends much of the day meeting with his other faculty lecturers and researching his own papers. He looks forward to his afternoon lecture on the Early Roman Republic and tries his best to make the lecture engaging for the students. After the lecture is finished, most of the students leave class quickly. Often students will linger to ask some questions relating to coursework but James finds these brief encounters to be unfulfilling. He wishes he could talk to his students as another person, rather than just to discuss their upcoming assessment. Once these students soon leave, James returns to his office and prepares to go home where he can spend some time with his family. “I’ve always enjoyed teaching and I don’t mind taking extra time to help those that want to learn.”
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Age: 29 Education: Masters in Software Engineering Location: UQ St Lucia Occupation: Unit Tester & Tutor |
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| Attentive | Generous | Persistent | Ambitious |
|---|---|---|---|
I am looking forward to a further career in tech, and am very driven to succeed in that field once I complete my studies. This is a part of the reason why I take extra time to tutor at university, so that I have a more competitive CV once I graduate.
- Use my expertise to assist students in learning to code, so that I might improve my own understanding of the fundamentals.- Gain experience so I can have a competitive CV when I graduate.
- It is difficult to find ways to share my knowledge outside of class hours.
- It is difficult for me to find a way to distinguish myself from my colleagues.
- I often find that teaching a large number of students
Katherine spends the day working on her research project. In the early afternoon, she has two hours of tutorials where she teaches Java to a room of thirty students. These shorts sessions tend to simply be Katherine answering different questions to many different students. She does not feel like she is truly teaching the students anything, and does not feel that she is learning anything from the experience. After class is over the students quickly leave and Katherine has nothing left to do other than head back to her office. Afterwards, she recalls that she found her tutorial unsatisfactory to how she would like to spend her time.