Peer Counselling was a new service that OSC had introduced this year. I joined this service solely because of my interest in Psychology and the passion to learn something new. When we started off, our objective was to help our peers with issues like stress, anxiety and depression- issues that have been on the rise amongst teenagers. After a lot of practise and observation one thing was clear to me- it’s not as easy as it seems. There are so many psychological components that have to be taken care of at the same time and if anything goes wrong, it can hurt people.

So, to get familiar with this, we started to learn how to be an active listener. We learnt the benefits and the methods so that we could put it in practise, if necessary. It was very fascinating because it taught us so many things that matter while having a conversation with someone- that we never know was important. This is us practising active listening.

We also started self-advertising so that people would know where to come if they needed any help. For this, we set up a notice board dedicated to our service and also set up a website explaining our services.

Overall, Semester 1 was just like we expected it to be. We’ve set up our base and want to keep building and adding onto it henceforth. It has helped me gain a lot of insight on people and problems and has taught me how to be more patient and understanding. My personal goal with this service is to build it up such that it has an impact on each and every student and teacher in this school, before I leave- since it is relatively new.