A Health Peer Educator’s Journey

Being a health peer has been an amazing journey for me. I got involved because the friends I knew who had been peers had only good things to say about it. The group that I worked with was so great. Not only were all our outreaches fun but our weekly meetings and extra bonding times/events were great too. One event that stands out for me is the big de-stress event at the end of last year. I really felt that I was helping a larger group of students and was really contributing to a healthy campus community.

One thing that surprised me is that I didn’t think I could grow and take on as much responsibility as I did. I felt very involved and really came to appreciate SFU more. I also made long lasting friendships with people I never would have met if not through peer education.

Because I had such a great experience in my first year in the program I applied to become a peer coach so I could pass on those experiences to other peers and help them grow. Being a coach has allowed me to take on a different kind of leadership role that I hadn’t experienced before – this was more of a professional leadership experience. I had the chance to mentor new peers and learned a lot about myself from this experience. It’s been extremely rewarding to help newer peers develop and reach their goals. Watching them grow with the program and use very creative ways to do so was very interesting to experience and I really enjoyed it.

All in all, being a peer educator has been an amazing experience for me and has changed my ideas of what I can do in the future.