A day in the life of Joost – Student Coach at Siggie for Students

Have you already seen ‘Siggie for students‘ on your campus and are you curious about what we do exactly? Then you are lucky! Because in this blog I take you through a day in my life as a Student Coach at Siggie for Students.

Let’s introduce myself!

Hi, I’m Joost a 27 year old Student Coach at Siggie for Students. Colleagues describe me as a sincere coach who communicates in an equal and personal way, but who can also be confrontational if necessary. Through my time as a student at the university, I was able to experience for myself how fun, challenging, pleasant, confrontational and complicated the life of a student can be. Do you want to know more about me? Read my story on our website.

Early Monday morning

It’s 7:30 am on Monday morning, the alarm goes off, and the sun is shining into my room. It’s nice to wake up on a spring morning. After the usual rituals, a protein-rich breakfast and a fresh walk, it’s time to get to work. I always start the first half hour by checking my mail. It’s always nice to see new registrations pouring in, because that means that students found a place to be heard and seen. I understand that it can be challenging to ask for help, but it makes me happy every time when students have taken that brave step! After I’ve checked my mail, I have a short video call with my colleague Dominique. She recently started as a student coach at Siggie and is a very nice addition to our team!

Time to coach some students

The coaching of students starts at 9am, this morning I will meet three students from the Erasmus University. The conversations with students often last about 30 to 45 minutes. During my sessions with students, we talk about the challenges students are working on. In general the goals are to increase wellbeing and resilience.

For me, a session means, “sincerely listening to and trying to understand students”. Every student is different, which means a unique personality in combination with their own personal situation. My sessions often contains of influences from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in combination with Positive Psychology. For me it is important to always look for a balance between discussing the complaints and reflecting on the strengths of the student. Of course there are often things that don’t go well and we talk about that, but I also try to make students aware of the qualities and talents. This is an important conviction for me during my work: every student has his or her own personal talents to learn to deal with everything that comes your way.

Time for a boiled egg and fresh smoothie

Lunch break! Since I work from home, I have the luxury of always making lunch on the spot. Because of this, I regularly cook an egg and make a fresh smoothie, definitely one of the advantages of working from home during the Covid pandemic! Besides my lunch, I always look for a moment to go outside and take a short walk. Fresh air is certainly not an unnecessary luxury during a pandemic in which we are indoors a lot!

Intervision

From 1 pm to 2 pm I have an intervision with Marsha, she is involved in the Siggie team based on her experiences as a psychologist. During the intervision we discuss student cases. Today we discuss the conversations I had with students and which treatment methods are appropriate. Intervision is an important moment for me during my working week, because it also gives me the space to develop myself as a therapist. In addition to discussing cases, we therefore also talk about my own development. For example, we are talking about things that I encounter as a therapist, because sometimes I have a difficult conversations, or I am touched by a student’s story. During intervision, I get the opportunity to talk about this with a committed and experienced colleague.

Intake interview

For the next two hours, I see two new students. These students recently signed up and this afternoon I see them for the first time. I always enjoy intake conversations, because for me it’s always a “special moment”. You meet someone you actually don’t know at all, and this person then tells you about who he or she is and what that person encounters. These conversations are often very personal and the student is in a vulnerable position. I always find this very inspiring and courageous. I always try to remind myself not to think this is “normal”. Of course I see and speak to many students and the risk is that you will find it “normal” for students to share their personal situation with you. However, I know from my own experience how difficult it can be to ask for help and dare to talk about your personal situation. That is why I always try to express my admiration for this in the first conversation with the student.

Team meeting

The last hour of the day we have a meeting with the entire Siggie team. Our team consists of eight people. Besides me and Dominique (the student coaches), our team consists of people who have expertise in the field of business management, marketing and ICT. In addition, we have a colleague in our team who has a PhD in Positive Psychology (super interesting) and a psychologist with a lot of experience in the field of digital treatment.

In our team meeting we discuss everything!

This includes, for example: ways to improve our treatment offering and strategies to reach even more students. A nice development that we also talked about is the development of group training for students. A very cool plan, in which we also want to help groups of students with the challenges during study time. So in the future we hope to offer group programs for students in addition to individual programmes.

Done for today!

After I have answered a few last emails, my working day is over. Let’s go to the gym, exercise and clear my head. The rest of the evening will probably consist of: dining, taking a walk and then doing nothing, by the way: taking a moment to just do nothing, is great!

Thank you for reading my blog, take care.

Joost Stoelhorst