[Introduction] Wang Hua, born in December 1988, and a member of the Communist Party of China, has been working as a counselor since August 2014. Since his assumption of office, he has always maintained a full working enthusiasm and devoted himself to student work, actively innovating working methods, and exploring new ideas for the work. He has won many honors: in 2014, 2015, 2018, he was awarded the outstanding teacher of the Xiamen University (XMU) Military Training Team; in 2015, he was awarded the XMU Summer Social Practice Excellent Team Teacher; in 2016, he was awarded the Excellent Counselor of XMU. In 2016, he was awarded the Excellent Counselor of the Yiban of the Ministry of Education; in 2016, he was awarded the third prize of the New Oriental Cup Counselor Professional Ability Competition of XMU; in 2017, he was awarded the Outstanding Communist Youth League of XMU; in 2017, his Network Culture Studio was listed among the second batch of innovative demonstrative projects for college students' ideological and political education in Fujian Province; in 2018, he was awarded the title of Outstanding Ideological and Political Workers in Xiamen; in 2018, his papers were awarded the second prize at the third Excellent Student Aid Work in Fujian Province.
"Now I prefer to use 'lighting lights' to describe my work, which gives people warmth and illuminates their dreams." Wang Hua said this about his work. He has been an XMUer from undergraduate to master, and from student to faculty, and thus loves everything of XMU. Nowadays, he is firmly on the laborious but fulfilling path of a counselor. In the past five years, he has risen from a fledgling to experienced one. "Counsellor should not be a title with a sense of distance in the minds of their students." Wang Hua is more willing to walk side by side with students, and be a youthful navigational device and a growth booster for them. He engages in psychological counseling, career planning and other works to help students light up the road to growth. This light is brightly flashing, illuminating the promising future of students, and shining upon the educational ideals that Wang Hua has long pursued.
Wang Hua impressed the undergraduate cohort of 2018 of the School of Economics when they just began the university life. As a counselor, his typical southern temperament met perfectly the expectation of the students: gentle and meticulous, patient and careful. The over 500 students felt so especially when each of them received wishes and blessings from Wang Hua on their birthdays. Even on the eve of the busy Spring Festival, Wang Hua would add students as friends on WeChat only to send blessings in time. How could he memorize so many names and dates? The secret is hidden in his notebook, which is a very common diary, with the date written on the header of each page. What is different is that under each date, there are all the names of the students who have birthdays on that day. More than 600 names were recorded on more than 360 pages according to the students' ID card information upon their admission.
Every school year, he would carry out the "Xinyu (innermost thoughts) Candy Project", talking to all the students one by one, listening to their problems of life, study, emotions, work, etc. in the university, and then give psychological counseling. At the end of the talk, he would give the student a piece of candy so as to conclude the conversation with a "sweet" feeling, dispel the psychological fear of the students as talking to a counselor, and encourage them to come to communicate with him. One student said, "Before university life, I was most afraid of the teacher coming to talk to me because it usually meant that I had made a mistake in school. Now, I have no such feeling at all. Teacher Wang is kind and friendly, cares about my state of life and study. Talking with him is just like chatting with my family. It is very comfortable and he would give me some snack. I like this very much."
When asked why he wanted to do this, Wang Hua mentioned a student he had met in his first year as a counselor who was almost collapsed by academic underperformance, disappointment upon the reality and childhood trauma. At that time, Wang Hua often talked with this student, gradually easing his mood and calming him down to think and plan his own life. In the next four years, Wang Hua introduced internship opportunities to him, exercised with him, and always care about and accompanied the student, watching him grow up little by little to face the world.
Wang Hua said that each of us will encounter more or less hurdles at some stages of our life. If someone can do you a favor when they occur, you may have a smoother transition and a completely different life experience. He said he is willing and should be the one to render help. And his method is to care about the needed superimpose bit by bit in a careful manner, which will lead to a qualitative change by quantitative accumulations.
The WeChat official account of "Counselor Wang Sir", registered by Wang Hua, has attracted many students' attention, of which the contents cover ideological education, life and study guidance, as well as some funny teases. Regarding the intention of establishing this account, Wang Hua said it was due to the change in the educational concept of the counselor. Facing the generation that grew up in the Internet era, Wang Hua believed that he should communicate with the students in a more interesting and socially-friendly manner. Now, this official account has a small but excellent team, providing many students with the opportunities to learn how to run an official account.
To have more shared topics with the students, Wang Hua also tried to pay attention to the things that they were interested in, from visiting Bilibili to chasing popular TV dramas, from learning Internet buzzwords to understanding the different views of the students on hot events. His intimacy with his students has enabled him to keep being young at heart. In addition, Wang Hua particularly loves and advocates for reading which in his opinion is a way of enriching the inner soul. His books on the desk are of various types, which have also become the main source of the official account while helping "Wang sir" to enrich himself and others.
The vivid emojis and humorous and unique language made many students become true fans of Wang's official account. They often said that the information of the account was interesting and bound up with the masses. For example, there was an article titled "In the university, has your takeaway been stolen?" discussing with students how to deal with such incidents, and appealed to students to eat takeaway (fast food) less and develop a healthy eating habit, and one student commented at the bottom of the article, "Stealing takeaway is wrong and unethical, change your behavior, don't be evil!"; The article "What kind of love do girls need in college?" analyzed the current network events, guiding the students how to view love, and helps them to establish a correct concept of love. One student shared this article in his WeChat Moments and wrote: "Proactively, motivate each other to be better in the future, this is the best face of love"; besides, the article "Shock! The XMUers all show off their wealth', but the last one was..." looked into the learning difficulties of the students from every college and school, and used interesting methods to help vent their negative feelings. At the end of the article, there was a photo of a cleaning worker wrestling to call for attention to the campus environment and cleaning work. Many students have been impressed and touched by such creative publicity, saying that they would contribute to the beautiful campus environment.
In 2016, Wang was awarded by Ministry of Education as the "Excellent Counselor". In 2017, the "Counselor Wang Sir" studio was awarded the second batch of innovative demonstration projects for college students' ideological and political education in Fujian Province. In 2018, Wang Hua participated in the major project "Big Data Ideological and Political Project Research" of Fujian Province Social Science Research Base, trying to make the ideological and political education more bright and colorful.
Wang Hua always believes that sports, as an important part of education, can not only help people shape a healthy body, but also a healthy psychological state. This is, however, often overlooked in daily life, study and work. Wang Hua is very passionate about sports. As long as he has time, he will take physical exercise in the gym to influence and inspire the students. And Wang Hua is responsible for the sports education of the School of Economics. He has given full play to the traditional advantages of the School and taken all the competitive sports activities as opportunities to improve the physical quality of the students and cultivate the spirit of teamwork among them. Sports with distinctive features encourage more and more students to walk out of their dormitories and participate in those activities, and thereby enriching their extracurricular life and emphasizing the significant role of sports in education.
During the school sports meet every year, he would work tirelessly and begin the preparations early, responsible for a variety of work from athlete mobilization, organization registration, selection, training, logistics support to live competitions. Under his guidance, the School of Economics has ranked No.1 in terms of the student group for five consecutive years from 2014 to 2018, and won 14th champion in 2018. In addition, under his organization, the School of Economics has achieved a series of outstanding achievements in many competition items such as volleyball, football, badminton, table tennis and golf. All those honors gained should be attributed to him. "What sportsmanship represents may be associated with persistence, unity, transcendence, health... But in the School of Economics, it also means inheritance. Our students have a passion for sports, and fight for honors by passing on the torch. The upholding of honor is our valuable treasure and an important aspect of our education." Wang Hua said.
Four years have passed since Wang Hua joined XMU, and he has been constantly making progress, not only as a counselor who cares about students, but as an induvial who enriches his own spiritual world with learning and exercising. He believes that counseling is a career that unites ideals and beliefs, contains sensibility and wisdom, and is the cornerstone to help college students grow into talents and realize their dreams. He is willing to be such a cornerstone, and willing to give his love for students and passion for this profession to contribute to the youth growth. In the future, he will keep walking with his students on the path.
