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- My name is Lulu Nkwanzi.
I am an international student from Zambia
at The University of Queensland.
My degree is commerce and law and I'm in my third year.
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So this is my office.
I am the 2018 International Student Officer
for the university's union.
And the student union is just a body that,
a representational body for students.
So my role is to advocate for students,
international students in particular
and just be the voice for them on campus
when it comes to issues and problems that they may face.
This semester I'm currently working on
a project called speak out where we are trying
to increase the international student
representation on campus.
So international students struggle
with so many different issues and we trying
to understand those from their perspective
and then get them to directly tell stakeholders
on campus like the staff members,
the vice chancellors and yes just increase
the international representation on campus.
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So this is the main refractory
where you have all the food places
or where you see all your familiar faces
because you know, all your friends might not take
the same courses as you,
so we all kind of meet here and hang out and eat.
And the other great thing is the Union provides
or has a store here for food
and that's where you get like to cheapest fries,
the cheapest chicken and anything on campus
you kind of get it from here.
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(mumbles) lakes, where a lot of students
just come to hang out again,
it's one of those quiet spots in uni
and campus except with all the animals around.
There's ducks, there's turtles
and sometimes people see eels in the water
but yeah, it's a great spot.
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There so many opportunities to grow on campus
if you're into entrepreneurship, like I am.
There's behind me the Ilab
where you get support for your idea
or business project and you get to understand
kind of all the nitty gritties you have to
get through to run a business.
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This is the law library
where all the law classes happen
and also has great study spots for students.
It's one the most popular libraries on campus currently
because it recently got renovated.
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What I love about my course is
we don't always have the big lecture styles.
We branch off to smaller classes
and we have seminars, sometimes that we do reflections
that are handwritten and I love to do those sometimes
because you're going off reading about
the topic you've never heard about before
and then you know you come back to have
an in-depth discussion with other students
and lecturers that had maybe a very different
perspective from you and I feel I learn more
by that than just getting the textbook knowledge
and doing homework, it's more hands-on and practical.
And the other side of things is
the facilities like the computer rooms
and just the libraries,
they're amazing facilities that I always use.
I once took this course called law and society
and it was one of the best courses I've taken
as a first year course because we really explored
what it meant to be a lawyer and the different angles,
the different approaches
that we argue cases or argue just in general.
We also explored what kind of lawyer
you'd want to be in the future.
So it was really really interesting to know
that there isn't just that one stereotype
or one I guess career paths that you could go into.
So that we had a whole course that talked to us
and just helped us explore that different side
of the whole course in general program.
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I think perfectly suited for somebody that is
passionate about advocacy as well as business.
I like to describe myself as a business oriented advocate.
So as much as I love the law,
I don't always picture myself in the future
going to court and arguing cases.
I also, I'm very interested in passionate about business.
And in my career, my future
I'm hoping to get into consultancy.
So as a business oriented advocate,
I'd have the benefit of knowing the law
and in the training that we do,
we're always trained to think differently
and look at just not one road that's maybe the obvious one.
We're always told to think about the other side,
think about the alternatives.
And at the same time with the commerce side of things,
it's interesting because you get a hands-on approach
with business information systems,
with technology side of things,
accounting and financing, investing.
So, again I describe that my course is
perfectly suited for somebody that is
passionate about both business and advocacy.
And maybe not law itself but advocacy
just wanting to be a voice for people
that don't have a voice
or wanting to really push an idea or a business.
I think this course is perfectly suited for that person.
My advice is to I guess focus more
or be prepared for second year.
So in the first year of university
everybody is excited because you know,
you've done your research, you've done your homework
about what the course would really be about.
So even when you're going and taking
those foundation classes,
you're like oh yes I've heard about this,
oh I know a bit about this.
But in that second year you start to really know
the difference between you being in that course
and somebody that has no idea about the course.
And that transition is a big challenge.
So my advice is to look out for that year
because it could really throw you off
if you continue to assume that you know,
your research is everything that the program is about.
The course is pretty long and it gets pretty detailed.
So my advice is to stay on top of things
and not to relax just after your first year
you feel like, I've heard about this
I'm familiar about this.
It gets a bit more challenging as you go on
but it's still manageable if you're ready for it.
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