我秘密工作午夜心灵之约.docVIP

我的秘密工作午夜心灵之约 　　It’s easy to feel paranoid1） walking home alone from a club at 2 am―especially in a new city. Your ears are ringing as you walk back to your halls. The unfamiliar streets seem especially dark and eerily2） quiet. Right now you’d give anything just to hear a friendly voice. Whether it’s fresher’s week3） or exams week， a university nightline service can be a life-saver， sometimes literally4）. Nightlines are student listening services that open in the small hours5）， relying on student volunteers to run and publicize the service. Nightline currently provides emotional support to over 1.5 million students， with 36 branches based at over 90 universities and colleges across the UK and Ireland. As a former volunteer for Voice， the University of Exeter’s student nightline， I know first-hand6） how rewarding―and challenging―the role can be. On a typical shift， I’d arrive just before 8 pm， ready for the 12-hour shift ahead. There were usually two or three volunteers a night， depending on whether it was a busy time of the year， such as the exam period. Someone would put the kettle on and bring out the snacks， and we’d all chat， watch a movie or get on with coursework. I would meet new people on most nights， but there was always a sense of camaraderie7）. At around 11 or 12 pm， we’d climb into makeshift8） beds and sleeping bags， always with one person next to the phone. The ringtone was loud so there was never any worry about sleeping through. The number of callers varied every night， which kept us on our toes9）. Sometimes no one would call， and on other nights the phone would ring minutes after I stepped through the door. Some calls left me feeling very tired. During one of my earliest sessions there was a distressed caller at three in the morning， and the call lasted almost two hours. But it always feels good to know a conversation is genuinely making a difference to someone. The majority of calls I answered were from students who were either h