International student reaches out

A Pierce College alumn, Adrian Sondhi, presides over the CSUN outreach center

Alexis Antoniadis / Roundup

Sipping on his vanilla latte from the Freudian Sip, 21-year-old Pierce College alumn sits at the transfer center waiting to assist future CSUN students.

Adrian Sondhi is from Malawi, Africa and is currently an international student at California State University Northridge (CSUN), he plans to double major in finance and psychology.

Leaving home at 17, he started working at the Pierce Financial Aid office to support himself.

“I lived by myself,” said Sondhi. “Basically, I was on my own”

Mike Martinez is Sondhi’s co-worker at the financial aid building, and says that Sondhi is the go to guy for electronics, and he works very hard at everything he does.

“He wont flinch to get the job done,” said Martinez

Eventually Sondhi completed his requirements at Pierce, and was accepted into CSUN.

Still working at the financial aid office, Sondhi was offered a job with CSUN’s outreach recruitment program, which included going to community colleges in the area and helping prospective students apply or following up on their applications.

“ It feels great to help students,” Sondhi said

According to Sondhi, transferring from a community college to a four-year university is a huge culture shock, and it is a completely different world.

“You're in a room with 150 other students,” Sondhi said “ It’s the real deal.” He goes on to say that community college is more like high school, and he never had a problem keeping up.

On the other hand, he struggled at first to keep up with the university’s work load.

“You need to be on top of your stuff,” Sondhi said. His main advice to students is time management

“ You spend five hours a day on Facebook what are you doing,” Sondhi said.

Students confide in Sondhi because he has been through it all. Randal Dang, a 20-year-old biology major waits in line to get his question answered about his submitted application.

“ Am I supposed to do anything else?” Dang said.

Dang asks his questions, and after ten minutes of conversing back and forth Dang was able to leave with piece of mind that everything was submitted correctly “ Pretty much he cleared up everything,” Dang said, “ He’s a huge help.”