Worth Your Time: Volunteering while you study.
Volunteering while you’re at university or college may be something that you’ve thought about before, or it might be something that has never crossed your mind. Some people are sceptical about volunteering while others are enthusiastic but feel they’re too busy to give up any of their scant free time - these are fair reasons to say no to volunteering. However, if you are thinking about volunteering, we hope to give you a little push in the right direction!
There are many different benefits of volunteering, especially when you’re studying, and we’ve listed just a few here.
Experience
On a purely practical level volunteering can make you a much more appealing candidate for graduate jobs when you finish your studies. You stand out from the crowd when you have the extra experience that volunteering gives you, especially if you manage to find a volunteering position that is relevant to your field of study. Volunteering is also a great way to bridge the gap between jobs, or show your dedication to a certain cause.
Time Management
Between classes, lectures and deadlines, university can be a very busy time and it can be easy to become burnt out and feel like you have no spare time. While it might feel like all you would be doing is adding to a busy schedule, it has been proven that giving your time away by volunteering can actually reduce the amount of stress you experience related to ‘time famine’. We go further into this subject in our two part series on Time Management, which you can find here!
Structure
Volunteering can provide a degree of structure to your life that you might be struggling to create for yourself. University is often your first time being expected to self-manage your schedule and volunteering can provide a good way to structure your time a little more, alongside your scheduled classes. This can help you feel more in control of your time and help you focus more on your studies.
Helping You Meet New People
Volunteering is the perfect opportunity to meet people who you never would have interacted with if you weren’t volunteering. You might have the chance to meet people from different age groups, peers who went on different paths than your own, or just anyone from a different walk of life to you. There are so many meaningful connections waiting for you if you decide to volunteer with an open mind.
Improving Confidence
Whether you’re looking to build confidence in specific skills, want to get better at talking to people, or just generally want to feel a little bit more secure in your abilities, volunteering will help you out. It gives you a chance to see yourself in action in a relatively low stress environment which will assure you of your abilities in other situations as well!
Community
Community can be a hard thing to find at university, especially if you’re doing a lot of distance learning, or if your degree is of a more solitary nature. Volunteering can bring you into the fold of a community and give you people that you can rely on, as well as just giving you the warmth that comes from feeling known and recognised for your actions.
Making Yourself Happier
Finally, volunteering does something that can be difficult to find these days - it makes you feel good. It can make a long-lasting positive impact on you, the way you look at the world, and your mood. Research shows that volunteering can improve your mental well being and make you happier in general!
Whether you feel swayed to volunteer by this information or not, we hope that this has been useful for you! We have some more resources coming out this month all about volunteering, the benefits that it has on your wellbeing, your studies, and your career, as well as a testimonial from some of our volunteers about their experiences volunteering with us!
