Ameen Bou Diab

It was a lot easier to find myself first within the community and it really made a difference.  

What Navitas college did you study at and when did you study? 

I studied at Eynesbury College starting towards the end of 2013. I think it was around October when I arrived and then I finished towards the end of 2014.  

 What is one of your favourite memories during your time at Navitas? 

Favourite memory at Eynesbury College would definitely be the lunchtimes with my classmates down Gouger Street, because we would spend a few hours in class doing maths and physics. I guess to the point where you were just absolutely brain drained and you just wanted to have a break and get some fresh air. And it was nice to leave the classroom and go out. So, we used to do a lot of group lunches. I used to go to Chinatown and get beautiful Chinese food. That was the highlight, honestly.  

 How has studying at Navitas made an impact on your life and that of your family?  

I think studying at Eynesbury has helped me build my confidence around failure, accepting failure and backing myself up, fundamentally speaking, and not necessarily fairly in a sense of academic failure, but it was also around time management skills, it was around applying for jobs, applying for voluntary roles, understanding where do I actually belong in this new community. And because it was a tight-knit community and a very small community. It was a lot easier to find myself first within the community, or we can call it intra-community, intra-Eynesbury before you can expand and go out to the real world.  

 And it really made a difference because the teachers, academic directors, are very supportive around you building your own identity, personality, and finding your way of doing the next thing, whether it’s applying for a job, whether it’s focusing on uni, focusing on your grades. And I thought overall the health and wellbeing aspect was really good because it was not one-shoe- fits-all, let’s just go and give you this advice. I think lots of the counsellors were working on a personal level with students. They really would give you the time to listen and give you tailored advice, not just a very generic advice that you’re going to have to study harder, you have to manage your time better, which is the obvious. 

To be frank, students don’t really want to hear generic advice when they’re going through hardship and the hardship could be anything, could be family overseas going through something, could be losing a family member, could be financial hardship, could be academic. So, I thought the overarching support system in place was, I’d say, crucial.  

Now the impact Eynesbury College has had on me personally and as a result on my family is summed up in one word: education. What that means…I was one of the few people who got to do engineering in my family, then continue on to do honours. And then go on to actually work in the industry and push myself throughout my career towards, what, the tail end of my sixth year now. And it wasn’t about getting an engineering degree. It was around actually finding yourself as an engineer in a foreign country, knowing that you can finish your degree and you can pass all the hurdles and you can tick all the boxes.  

 It doesn’t really mean you’re going to be a great engineer. I think the impact that’s had on my family is a sense of security, knowing that the youngest son out of five kids is safe, secure, is successful – whatever the word successful might mean to different people. But to them it just meant he found himself, he found his community, he found his people, he found his career. So they were happy as a result of that.  

 So, I think the family outcome was, our youngest son has found himself, more importantly, which I thought was beautiful.  

 What have you achieved in your life and career since graduating?  

So what I’ve achieved so far in my life since graduating is probably summarised to a single skill set. And I would boil it down to speaking skills, public speaking skills and the ability to contextualise the length, information, change the information depending on target audience. And it’s not only in presentations, it’s part of work and the confidence you’ve built academically, but more so public speaking in speech setting versus in conferences versus in networking events versus with clients and executives and board members. 

And I think the biggest achievement to date, I suppose, is being able to separate and know when to have to provide a more formal, you know, piece of communication versus more informal. And sometimes you have to mix the two. And where could you truly shine and be yourself and expand on who you are and be more quirky and demonstrate who you are as a person, showing your personality more versus in other areas where you just really have to get straight to the point. So I would sum it up by saying public speaking.  

 And the biggest achievement was speaking at a conference in Tokyo recently. And the outcome of that was getting invited to speak in Singapore next year. So that’s been, I’d say, the biggest achievement. And primarily because as a kid, I used to stutter. And that’s why I would refer to it as an achievement. Not because I really want people to hear me talk, but because I used to struggle as a kid who was speaking in his own world, right? Forget speaking well and contextualising and having the right pace and projection and pitch and all the speaking skills. It was more around speaking continuously, cohesively had these challenges and as an adult speaking in a new language, I think it was quite a hurdle for me to overcome. Beyond the new language, it was around how do you master or how do you overcome a speech disability, essentially.  

 What advice would you have for new students entering a Navitas program?  

My advice to new students entering any Navitas program at any point, whether it’s foundation studies, whether it’s a diploma, is build relationships and find your style in doing so. What that means throughout your whole journey, when you first start and you meet classmates, always remember that those classmates around you will most definitely be your colleagues and not necessarily colleagues you’re going to work with at the same company, but they will most likely be your industry peers.  

 And so hypothetically, if you’re doing engineering, you’re doing business. The world of business in that given city, a world of engineering is not that big. Eventually you’re going to be in the same room at some point.  

So, the first rule I would say, not to cut bridges for a start, but also understanding why you shouldn’t. It’s not because it’s a rule that you just have to follow blindly. It’s more around valuing the relationship that people bring to you without having an expectation. So, the key, key advice is build relationships, give to people. Try to give more than being too focused on receiving. Because primarily the more you give, the more you add value to anyone around you, to your environment, the people, you’ll naturally start receiving more. But don’t do it with that in mind.  

 And that’s, I think the key difference that I like to draw between networking and relationship building. And the term ‘networking’ is not my favourite primarily because it has this connotation of taking advantage, perhaps, when you’re trying to meet someone because you want something from them. 

And I sort of remind people that this term evolved over decades. But actually the point we want to get across is relationship building, just learning how to build a relationship with people. Learning how to ask more personal questions, understanding what are they like? What are their hobbies? What’s their favourite sports team? Before you get to business, before you get to a group project. For students, you’re starting in your first year, you’re probably going to be doing a group assignment together. Before you start the assignment, you should at least know what’s your favourite place to go, whether it’s to go play sports, whether it’s to go relax. Do you like painting, drawing, playing basketball? Do you like dancing?  

 These are very fundamental components of what makes us human, and so you can’t really move too far away from them. And I think in a lot of professional settings, unfortunately, sometimes there’s this pressure of having to network under this disguise. What I remind students is I just want you to be you. Get comfortable with your skin, get comfortable with how you talk to people. It doesn’t matter how good, average you think your English is, your accent is. It’s irrelevant. People will get to know for who you are.  

 And I think there’s a lot of self-consciousness around the English proficiency because we come as international students and we get worried and we get afraid how we’re being perceived perhaps. So, I think there’s this level of self-confidence that gets built over time as long as students are putting in the effort to build a relationship. And it really starts in the classroom and then it goes beyond. You start volunteering, then you get a part-time job, and then you start speaking to your colleagues and then you apply for a job and then it just expands. And that’s what I call the ripple effect. And ultimately by the time you graduate and start working, people will start going back to you and going, thank you for doing this for me. Thank you because you actually have been serving people.  

 So, I would say service and building relationships.