 Hi everybody and welcome along to another episode of UCAT LVSA conference television. I am Colom Cronin from the Adventures in Advising podcast and today I am delighted to be joined by Ariana from LVSA. How are you doing Ariana? Hi Colom, good to see you. Well I'm doing fine considering of course the circumstances that we are all in. Yeah it's great to be at your show. Well I'm glad you took the time to chat to me. Now I imagine you know a lot of the viewers will recognise you but for viewers who are a little bit less familiar with you and your work. Can you talk to us I suppose about your work maybe what you do at Leiden and also your work with LVSA? Yes so I'm a study advisor at Leiden University at the Institute of Political Science for the Bachelor of Political Science. And I'm working for a very diverse group of students so there are entering 400 students per year, 60 nationalities. And actually that was the reason that I was a member of the Dutch Association for Study Advisors. But I was looking for information about how to advise and support international students. And I joined the workgroup International Cooperation and through that workgroup I got in touch with UCAT. And also with the American organization NACADA. And so far it was a very fruitful cooperation I must say. Well that's good to hear and certainly there are great people in all three of those organizations LVSA, UCAT and NACADA. And one of the I suppose interesting in terms of internationalization is the symposium that you were involved with. And LVSA, UCAT joined symposium that took place back in December. And I had the good fortune to also be part of it. But could you tell viewers a little bit about that symposium and what that one was all about? Yes, okay well actually you were the host of that symposium and so you brought life to it. So we decided to work together LVSA and UCAT on the celebrating the work as an advising as a tutor in times of the pandemic. And at that moment in December 2020 it was nine months we were already for nine months in the corona situation. And we thought it would be interesting to reflect on what happened during all these months and how did we cope with it. And then instead of tutors and advisors are always focused on the students, on their well-being, on their support. And we decided that to look at the advisors and tutors themselves and put them in a spotlight and celebrate the work for a moment. So reflect on how you're doing, how you're coping, but also why are you doing the work as a study advisor. Because during the pandemic it turned out to be even more essential to be able to support these students to continue studying. But in order to be able to do that we also need to take care of ourselves as advisors for our own well-being. And that's actually what we focused on in December. Yeah, that's all very true. And now we are another three months on. And we are going to now look to the future as part of this LVSA-UCAT kind of another collaboration. And there is another symposium going to be taking place tomorrow. And maybe you could tell viewers a little bit about what that symposium will be doing. Yeah, well the symposium in December was about reflecting on the months that were in the past. And then we had a lot of positive reactions and people who said they really enjoyed the symposium and they were looking forward to new work of this type of initiative. So we decided to continue working and organize a new symposium. And that is the one that will be taking place tomorrow. And now the symposium is looking at the future. So reflect on a year of being on the corona situation and what are the good ideas, the good initiatives we can bring along when the corona situation will be over. So how can we use the positive elements out of the crisis and to also co-create outputs that we have got last year to improve our work as tutors and advisors? Yeah, so it's a lovely companion piece. But for people, if you didn't attend December, you can of course still attend this piece. So any viewers can certainly go along. And I might put you on the spot in a minute, Arianna, and ask you about other things that you're looking forward to during these conferences. While I give you a moment to think, I will put up on the screen for our viewers ways in which they can get more information and look to get involved. You can see on there the conference hashtags that we are using. You can see the LVSA dedicated Twitter account. There is also a LinkedIn group available. Anyone who is looking for more information, wants to get involved, wants to continue the conversations after sessions have ended, please do join the LinkedIn groups. Please do continue the conversations on social media. It is a great way to reach out and to get more information. And I suppose then as we begin to wrap up, just interested in hearing what else you are looking forward to over the coming days. Well, what I mainly look forward to is meeting new people from UK and also from the LVSA. I think that is the most important thing of the conference is to widen your view and your perspective and to have new knowledge and meet new people. That is also what I would recommend to the people that are watching is look for yourself, look for something new. Look out of the box when you participate in activities and to give you new ideas for your work and also to give you new energy for the work. That is really sage advice and I want to just say thank you for taking the time to join me today. I hope that you enjoy the remainder of the two conferences and I hope that you do get to meet lots of people from both LVSA and UK. I think it is going to be a great few days. Thank you again. Okay, thank you very much.