By: Angelo Gamalindo, Raye Sanchez
The Guidance and Counselling Office familiarizes the new breed of Letranites with their services through an orientation entitled “Survival Skills 101: Becoming the toughest Letranite.”
The Colegio’s guidance counsellors visited the classrooms of the new students from July 30 to August 3.
The orientation discussed the misconception about the GCO, students’ career assessments, duties and responsibilities of a college student, and opportunities to participate.
Aside from the office’s offered services which includes: student career assessments, opportunity to learn basic counselling; the orientation also tackled about the duties, responsibilities and fear of a college student. Also, the misconception about the office was also highlighted.
The College of Engineering and Information Technology (CEIT) guidance counsellor Cora- Lynne Regencia shared that the orientation intents to showcase the true embodiment of the office in the Colegio.
“Sabi ko sa students ko, make sure to stop the notion of ‘pag tinatawag ka ng guidance ibig sabihin may mali kang ginawa,” Regencia stressed. “. If you have any concern, if you want to talk about it you can always come to the Gguidance Ooffice hindi dahil tulad ng dati ginagawa panakot ng professors which is hindi dapat,” clarified Regencia.
Regencia also shared to The LANCE that the orientation is pivotal to the freshmen in their adjustment stage in both academic and personal aspects.
“Diniscuss namin dun is ‘yung fears na pwede nilang ma-encounter or fears that they might be feeling ngayong college; pagpasok nila ng first year and some tips on how they can overcome it,” Regencia shared.
The Guidance assures that each college are well administered through the specifically assigned counsellors per college.
Cora-Lynne Regencia, CEIT; Harold Sto. Domingo, College of Business Administration and Accountancy (CBAA); Abigail Taladtad, College of Liberal Arts of Sciences and College of Education.
By scheduling room-to-room inductions, counsellors hope to obtain that intimate feel with the students in order to be able to guide them more thoroughly.
The Guidance and Counseling office also aims to encourage students to socialize by joining different student organizations.
“Hindi lang mae-enclose within the room or within their college kasi ‘yung mga organizations is karaniwan institutional diba, ‘yun college-wide kasi meron ‘yan from different colleges,” Regencia expressed.
The Guidance and Counselling Office offers a variety of services to students. Aside from the orientations and seminars, the office also administer psychological assessments such as the use of College Adjustment Scale (CAS) and individual inventory services through the Individual Inventory Record (IIR).
According to Regencia, the CAS is utilized to assess the current situation of a student, while the IIR is used by the office as personal records of students.
Some freshmen who experienced the said orientation shared how it had benefited them.
“Very beneficial for me. I took my senior high school education here at Letran. Despite that, may times parin na nahihiya ako. With the talk that they did, alam ko na kung pano ko mao-overcome yun,” said Tourism Management freshman Joseph Sanchez.
“A great help for me to cope up with the new environment that I have,” said Journalism freshman Andrea Ysabel.
She also commended the orientation as to how it stresses on surviving college while enjoying.
On the other hand, another freshman shared a different takeaway from the orientation.
“For me po kasi di talaga ako takot magkamali sa lahat maski survival na kasi I always believe po na mistakes are always part of our lives,” said Communication major Kevin Braseliño.
He also expounded on taking risks in order to learn.
“Pag hindi po natin sila nagawa, di po tayo matututo. Pag di po tayo natuto, di po tayo mag-iimprove. Kaya po feeling ko there’s [nothing] wrong sa pag-try. Ang mali po is yung sumuko ka ng di nag-ttry,” he said.