Since I want to use this website as a dump for my learnings through college, I’m super excited to write about the job I have just started working in, which is being a tour guide with Gaucho Tour Association, @ucsbgta on instagram. I am going to be giving tours to either high schools from around california, or to individual families looking to enter UCSB in the Fall right after high school, or transfer students looking to enter in their third year.
I honestly had joined this job because I wanted a job, and not anything else. I have since realised the atmosphere and people in the GTA are amazing! I have already made so many new friends and connections, and I think this is partly because everyone is, as someone told me, a “personality hire”. People are not recruited for their experience because the employers assume we don’t know anything because we are in fact just college students; we get trained when we join. But because of this, everyone is extremely outgoing and friendly, and it has really made me feel very included and welcomed. I’ve been in UCSB for over a year but I don’t think I’ve met a group of people this open and kind and willing to share their experiences and help each other out. Even the initiation into GTA, the first meeting I attended, was so positive and empowering.
Recently I have discovered that engineering interests me more than pure Physics does, as evident by my participation in the Gaucho Rocket Project and a materials lab. Because of this I might transfer out of UCSB for my third year. Getting this job makes that decision even harder, because I want grow in this job, and see how it turns out. Although I do know if I end up getting the transfer, the likelihood of me leaving is very high, which sucks. Let’s see what happens.
