Becoming aware of the blessings that are right in front of you is such a humbling experience. That is exactly what happened to me when I became a Nexus Student Ambassador for Cairn University in the fall of 2015. Coming into Cairn as a freshman, I knew that this school held a lot for me and was going to shape my life. But I didn’t fully understand the kind of impact our school has on people until I had spent three years on this campus, learned  more about the morals students are expected to uphold, and saw these morals executed. Being a Nexus worker, we are told to handle this job as if it were an internship due to the many responsibilities that are given to us. Part of being a Nexus worker includes many behind-the-scenes jobs such as making phone calls to prospective students, planning and hosting open house events, and filing various things in the office.

Along with all of the time-consuming and important tasks, my favorite task of all is giving tours to prospective students and sharing with them their first impression of Cairn University.  If you think back to when you visited colleges, the tours are probably what stuck out to you most about the college. If you had a tour guide who seemed negative, you might have gotten a negative impression of the school as a whole and vice versa with a positive tour guide. The tours, in a sense, either can make or break your college decision.  In knowing that, as a Nexus worker we are trained to make prospective students feel welcomed and taken care of. Our school is known for the personalized visits that we give and the opportunities that we provide for students. When we give tours we are prepped with some knowledge of who the visitors are and what they are interested in, and we are responsible to base the tour and visit on those interests. I love getting to meet the different people that come to our school and seeing God use my past experiences to link me with their experiences. It’s a great character-building job because you are put in a position of leadership and have to learn be flexible when a classroom that you were supposed to show was locked, or a student is unwilling to talk and engage, or some of your friends pass you in the hall and comically call you a different name just to confuse the people on the tour. There are many times when you have to laugh at what happened and times when you cannot by any means laugh, and you need to be able to discern the difference.

Being a student worker for this school has really prepared me for the future career that I will have. I’ve been taught to be personable, flexible, organized, clear in my speech, professional, and dedicated. Above all the skills I have acquired here, I have developed a new sense of appreciation for my university and all the hard work that goes into the first step of becoming part of the community that I call home.