Student Leadership Showcase: Mitchell Ng

Mitchell was selected as the Peer Leader of the month for February 2019. 

What do you enjoy most about being a peer leader?

"One thing that’s always really special to me is getting the opportunity to gain some new perspective, and especially getting the chance to see through the lens that I have kind of left behind in a sense. I don’t know, I guess I found that once you’ve kind of gotten used to something or spent more than a month in one place or doing one thing, you get used to it really quickly and when you move on, you kind of forget about the questions you asked before you arrived or you forget about the things that you were dealing with. So, getting a chance to talk with my first years a little bit, in whatever capacity, it’s been nice getting reminded of where I come from. Again, it’s weird even just saying that because it wasn’t that long ago. It wasn’t even a year ago that that’s where I was, but a lot can change in a short time."

What do you like to do to de-stress?

In terms of de-stressing, I have a ukulele and a guitar currently in my possession. I’ve reached a point where I am pretty happy with my skill level with the ukulele, so I like to play that to de-stress. It’s really easy to pick up and put down when something’s downloading on your computer. It gives you a few seconds of a break or even if you take a half hour just give yourself that time. I’m trying to learn guitar, so I can’t say things like, “oh, you’ll have to excuse me, I’m a little rusty!” because my skills have never been polished in the first place, but I’m trying to learn that. So that’s what’s on the table right now for me."

What does your ideal Friday night look like?

"My ideal Friday night? I think, and this is probably going to sound really square and boring, but there is some ideal Friday night out there where I’ll reach one day once I’ve really got my time management skills down and figured out what I want to do. Right now, my ideal Friday night is to go to Fellowship because we have that on Fridays, and spend some time with those people, having conversations and spending time with them, and then coming home and going to bed on time because that means I can do something with my Saturday because I’m not sleeping into a terribly late hour."

What advice do you have for someone who is looking to get involved?

"I definitely recommend it, like one hundred percent. Even if you’re not really sure what that’s going to mean for you or where you want to be, I guess the thing that I always tell myself and my mentality for signing up for extracurriculars and getting involved is that the time you spend being involved is most likely time, if you were not there, you’d be watching YouTube or something, or just doing nothing. Of course, that’s not true for everyone, but for a lot of people, we don’t use free time to its fullest capacity. So, when you put some of that at least into being involved, it really expands your horizons because you learn things you otherwise never would have learned about, especially in regard to other volunteer opportunities and resources around the school or different events that are going on. Just do it. Find some door to put your foot in and start somewhere because there’s a lot that you don’t know and you won’t realize that until you start moving in that direction."