Every Wednesday of January, Metro’s Workology section will be featuring a variety of careers that you may not have thought of; jobs in which you stay in college or university after graduating.
There are many jobs that make post-secondary institutions hum, here’s but a few:
Enrolling in a university gives students access to a range of fitness and health experts the likes of which they’ll never see again, with staff on hand to get you into shape and to deal with injuries if it goes badly.
Susan Yurincich, fitness centre manager at Brock University, points to the school’s qualified instructors in spin class, kick boxing, ball workouts, aqua fitness, dance, fencing and Japanese swordsmanship.
“You also get a free orientation with a personal trainer,” she says. “(Students) get their own fitness program created for them.”
Brock, which has campuses in St. Catharine’s and Hamilton, both in Ontario, has hundreds of varsity and intramural teams in sports such as soccer, volleyball, hockey, underwater hockey and dodgeball.
“Just having a Brock student card, they automatically get the use of our indoor track, all the gyms, our studios, the whirlpool, the pool, squash courts and outdoor tennis courts,” Yurincich says. Most other post-secondary institutions work this way as well.
Joe Kenny, head of Brock’s Athletic Therapy Clinic, oversees a staff including three full-time athletic therapists, three sports medicine doctors and an orthopedic surgeon to deal with any sports-related injuries, be they varsity or intramural.
University is a great time to get sick, too. In Halifax, nurse manager Jane Collins sees 60 to 70 students a day at Saint Mary’s University’s Student Health Centre. Complaints range from bad backs to sexually transmitted infections to mental-health issues.
“We have the best health service in the city,” Collins says, with a team of practitioners led by five doctors swiftly tending to sick students. “If anybody comes by who has a sore throat or something urgent like a bladder infection, we always fit them in.”
The centre does blood work onsite, saving students a trip to the hospital. It can also do minor surgeries like wart removal. The costs are included in the student health plan. That’s great news for international students, who otherwise would face a hefty bill and a long wait with a trip to the emergency room.
The centre closes on the weekends, but it’s not unusual for Collins to get a call on her cellphone from a student who needs the morning-after pill. She always makes sure they get what they need.
For mental health, they have psychiatrists and student counsellors to whom they refer students and psychologists are covered under the health plan. “We’re very aware of mental health. This is the age of early psychosis,” she explains. “If somebody comes in who’s obviously in a psychotic episode, we send them to the early psychosis program or the psych nurse at the local hospital.”
The centre also provides information on sexuality and sexual health, including daily tests for STIs.
“There’s all kinds of pamphlets and educational material,” Collins says.
