Tiia, Ahola, M.A. (Educ.), Senior Lecturer, Student Counsellor, Responsibility in Business and Services, Lapland University of Applied Sciences
Key words: study counselling, resilience, resonance
Why do students need more than a study plan?
When a student books an appointment with a study counsellor, they usually have questions related to the progress of their studies, the accumulation of credits, and their future career plans. These are most common themes from the perspective of student counselling. There are often also conversations about personally meaningful things to the student. These meaningful things become rarely the primary focus of discussion, yet they have been in a chat and explored while talking about more study-related things.
In a rapidly changing world, students need resources that help them face uncertainty about the future, explore different possibilities, and trust in their ability to navigate educational and career transitions. According to Savickas and Porfeli’s (2012) concept of career adaptability, these resources include future orientation, a sense of control choices, curiosity in exploring career alternatives, and confidence in one’s own abilities. This concept can also be described as resilience; the ability to adapt, to change and find opportunities for action even in uncertain circumstances.
In my own student counselling practices, I have asked students to share experiences that they find meaningful. Rather than asking: “What do you want to do after graduation?”, students can reflect on their own experiences through questions such as: “When was the last time you felt excited or felt a sense of belonging to something?” and “In what situations have you felt most like yourself?”
In this article, I try to figure out the relationship between meaningful moments, in other words Rosa Hartmut’s idea of moments of resonance and resilience. In preparing this article, I have used the AI application Copilot to help structure the topic and identify connections between resonance and resilience. As a counselling professional, I personally see a strong connection between these two: recognizing meaningful experiences is important for recognizing professional direction and finding ideas to one’s career path. With the support of Copilot, I have organized my thinking around relevant theories for this article and tried to translate my ideas from Finnish into English as an understanding form.
Resonance from perspective of study counselling
The concept of resonance means simply to feel connected to the world. According to Hartmut Rosa, resonance happens when something feels meaningful and connected to us, and it changes somehow the way we think or feel about the world. Resonance cannot be forced. It happens through the interaction between individuals and their environments (Brown, 2024).
From a student counselling perspective, resonance offers an interesting alternative to discussions that focus primarily on goals and achievements. Instead of trying to identify a single “correct” career choice, students can reflect on situations where they have experienced enthusiasm, interest or a sense of meaning. During studies, such kind of experiences may come from internships, group projects, case-based learning activities and face-to-face study sessions, especially outdoors. Students’ experiences can provide valuable information about the environment, tasks, and roles that support students’ well-being and sense of agency.
Identifying moments of resonance with students
I used the “Identifying Moments of Resonance” exercise, with sport students during their on-campus studies. Exercise is developed in the Green Guidance project. The aim of the exercise is to help participants recognize experiences in which they have felt connected to themselves, to other people, or the world around them. The exercise is based on the idea that meaningful experiences from the past can help people find directions for the future.
In the Identifying Moments of Resonance exercise, students wrote about situations where they felt especially excited, interested, or inspired. To help them recognize these situations, I used the following questions:
- What moment gave me energy? What did I enjoy?
- Who was it important for? Who did I feel connected to?
- What did it teach to me? What did I learn or understand?
- What happened that I did not expect? What surprised me?
After this, the students looked at their notes and reflected on the following questions:
- What would I like to experience again?
- What do I notice in the world around me? What interests me or makes me curious?
- What could I try next? Identify one small and practical action.
- Write on sticky notes what you would like to give to others to make the world a better place.
Here the discussions did not focus on students’ achievements or success. Instead, the focus was on experiences that made students feel motivated, engaged, or connected to themselves and the world around them. In traditional counselling, students are often asked about their goals and plans. In this exercise, the focus shifted to experiences and feelings.
It was wonderful to see how focused the students were while writing on their moments. At the end, they shared meaningful experiences with each other. This helped students to find words to describe their own moments to others, get to know one another better and exercise also strengthened the sense of community in the group.
I believe that similar than the Moments of Resonance exercises can be useful at any stage of a student’s study path. I assume that it may be especially valuable near the end of studies, when students can reflect on meaningful moments from their whole study path. I also think that it is often easier for students to identify meaningful experiences than to define long-term career goals. Questions about the future can be difficult, but everyone can talk about experiences that they have enjoyed and remembered.
Meaningful experiences are always personal, but they can also be shared with others. These experiences give teachers valuable information about what students find meaningful and important.
Lapland University of Applied Sciences and resilience-building counselling
Lapland University of Applied Sciences is known for its best student counselling. We are proud of the positive feedback we have received in recent years from the AVOP student survey, which the graduate students fill. We have had good results, especially with student counselling.
Guidance that supports resilience through the recognition of resonance moments does not require new systems or separate services. Following Brown (2024), it means facilitating experiences where students can feel joy, meaning, safety, support, and confidence that things will work out in the end. It may involve asking new kinds of questions, encourage deeper reflection, helping students recognize meaningfulness and connection, and making their personal strengths more visible.
We are already using VAHTO strength-based guidance model. We have a good opportunity for the next step in developing student counselling: supporting students’ professional resilience more consciously through identifying the moments of resonance.
These practices fit well with the student-centered approach to student counselling at Lapland University of Applied Sciences. In this way, study counselling supports not only students’ progress in their studies, but also their ability to build a meaningful and sustainable future.
References
Brown, C. (2024). Introducing career resonance. Journal of the National Institute for Career
Education and Counselling, 53:1, 18–23. https://doi.org/10.20856/jnicec.5303
Green Guidance. (2026.). Identifying moments of resonance. https://www.green-guidance.eu/methodology/identifying-moments-of-resonance/
Savickas, M. L., & Porfeli, E. J. (2012). Career Adapt-Abilities Scale: Construction, reliability, and measurement equivalence across 13 countries. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 80(3), 661–673. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2012.01.011