This blog post was written by our student ambassador Ana, a student of the semiotics programme at the University of Tartu.
Are you a student of the University of Tartu? Do you find your studies to be overwhelming sometimes? Or maybe the curriculum is too much to handle? Maybe you need some pointers for better time organization and preparation for your courses, or for your career? If you want to find out the answer to all those questions, then the University of Tartu counselling centre is the right place for you!
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The University of Tartu counselling centre or the UT counselling centre for short, is a structural unit of the University of Tartu which helps students with selection and organization of studies and the curriculum through various workshops. These workshops focus on improving one's academic writing skills, proper time organization for studying and preparing for exams in order to avoid procrastination, doing everything a day before the deadline and bad results and also acts as a big support for students with special needs.
UT counselling centre also offers career counselling in seminars on how to write a proper CV and a motivation letter, so the students will be well prepared to take an important step forward after the University chapter closes.
The two most influential and fundamental programmes of the UT counselling centre are the psychological support and the peer tutor training course, which will be further explained:
- Psychological counselling: As mentioned previously, studying at the university can be overwhelming and stressful for many students. Plus there can be some other issues which can bother students such as; homesickness, winter depression, cultural shock, money or family issues, having trouble fitting in, etc. Luckily for all those students, UT centre offers psychological counselling with professional experts whose main goal is to help out students face their problems with talks and very helpful advice on how to resolve those problems in the best possible way. Psychological counselling is free for all the UT students and students just need to book an appointment with the psychologist on the UT webpage by using the UT e-mail address.
- Peer tutoring course: We have all been new students who just started their studies at the University of Tartu and have just arrived to Estonia. Everything is new and maybe even confusing to us.
Which courses should I take? What kind of lecturers will I have? What is the student life in Tartu like? What is Tartu like? Yes, we all have been through that and have asked the same questions. And who is better to answer to all those questions than the students who have had those same experiences.
The counselling center provides a Peer Tutoring course in summer semester for all the interested BA and MA students, both Estonian and international in order to prepare the students for a role of the peer tutor; a student who will help out all the new students with study organization, student life in Tartu and any other questions and concerns the new students may have regarding studying and living in Tartu.
All the interested students can register for the course in the SIS. The peer tutors first take a course which will teach them and enable them to help out their future peers through the lectures and seminars about the structure of the university, study programmes and the potential issues and situations the new students might face. In the autumn semester, the peer tutor introduces themselves to the new students and organizes various activities for them such as; nature walks, city tours, welcome gathering in a cafe or a restaurant, visit to a museum or a gallery...so all the new students can feel more welcome and more confident in the new environment.
The UT counselling centre is located in the University of Tartu library (W. Struve 1, rooms: 444-452, 454) and it's open from Monday to Friday from 9:00 to 12:00 and from 13:00 to 16:00 h. Feel free to visit the centre any time.
For more information, here is the link of the UT counselling centre webpage.
Find out which international degree programmes are available for you in Estonia.
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