Tuesday 17 November 2020 is #InternationalStudentsDay! We were lucky enough to have three international students from UNSW Global complete their Professional Development Program with us in October. Meet Amy, Suzie and Hayes.

Transcript

Ni Luh (Amy) Suri Laksmi Krisna: Hi, my name is Amy. I’m an international student at UNSW. I’m from Indonesia.

Suzie Ling: Hi there, my name is Susie Ling and as you can see from my black hair, I’m an international student from China.

Chong Hei (Hayes) Cheng: Hi there, my name Hayes. I’m an international student at UNSW from a small town of Macau.

Tell us about the project and what tasks you were responsible for.

Amy: I think UNSW, just, provides a really great program for International Students, because in this program we assisted our supervisors to check, to audit the website of the Music Performance Unit.

Actually, I’ve never had any backgrounds about websites before, but we learned a lot about websites. And in this program I was responsible to check for the content of the website and make it align with the UNSW guidelines and also give some recommendations to give a better improvements.

Suzie: And I’m in charge of the writing component checking, and the search engine optimisation with accordance to the UNSW current practices.

Hayes: And I was responsible for checking all the visual content of the website and provide possible recommendations for improvements.

What did you learn about the Australian workplace?

Suzie: During the program I have learned a lot of meaningful things, and the things are not limited to the soft skills improvement that I am intended to have, but I have learned more than that.

With contacting our supervisor and staff within the Music Performance Unit I have found out that the Australian workforce is quite different from other countries workforce. It’s pretty chill and flat. Everyone can express their opinions when they want to and there is a very generous relationship within every staff.

Amy: And one of the things that I learned a lot about Australian working place is that everyone is open for discussions and also that we are encouraged to give our opinions and also arguments to make everything better.

What did you learn about Music Performance at UNSW?

Hayes: It is quite interesting that I was actually a member of the UNSW Orchestra before I was allocated to this department for the PDP project, and to note that I played a bassoon that is borrowed from the Music Performance Unit and I have to say that they have been really helpful, so that I can still play my favourite instrument even when I was away from home, and so, thank you so much.

Amy: Actually, I’ve never heard anything about orchestra at UNSW before, but I think, I just realised that this is a really great unit, because MPU is not only provides a really great concert and events, but also opportunities for International students and also exchange students to participate.

Suzie: Before I joined the program, I have to be really honest, I don’t know anything about musical instruments or orchestra or choir, and I don’t even know the existence of our Music Performance Unit (within our school of course). However, after I joined the program, I just suddenly found out that there are so many opportunities for International Students within the Music Faculty, including scholarships and exchange and sponsorships.

So, anyone who is interested in music or who played a musical instruments, who attended orchestra, or is interested in choir, just hop onto the MPU website and have a look which opportunity is suitable for you and try to enrich your university life!