Week 7

Hope everyone enjoyed the class from this past week! Amy and I really wanted to challenge you all to take into consideration your areas of strength and weakness for the different values outlined in the chapter. Everyone did a really great job of critically thinking about each value and comparing it to the others. They were also asked to base their decision on what value they thought of as their strength and weakness on the ways their role model expressed these values.

When I was asking myself to pick out my areas of strength and weakness among the values from the chapter, it was a very hard decision. I felt that there were different levels of strength and weakness I had for each value. My opinion also was affected when I thought about how my role model expressed these different values. For instance, my mother is who I picked as my role model and when I think about how she has a sense of purpose throughout everything she does, it is much different to where I am in my sense of purpose for my daily life. I feel as though I have a sense of purpose and direction every day to a certain degree. But my mother has a much greater purpose and overall sense of knowing of how her day is going to progress and what she needs to accomplish. This is a prime example of how I can look at a value as a strength in one way, and then re evaluate it in a different perspective and realize that I still have certain weaknesses about it that I can improve.

I will always be learning and growing throughout my entire life so there is nothing wrong with taking a step back every once awhile to re evaluate yourself and make necessary alterations to become stronger in areas needed. As peer mentors, we can guide our mentees into helping them discover their strengths and weaknesses as they venture into college. Hope you all learned a lot from this chapter and activity!

week 6

This week was a particularly interesting class just because we were all asked to further examine ourselves and how we are self aware. It was more of a personal class for me when we were asked to share something significant in our lives that made us who we are now. It was hard to pinpoint a specific occurrence in my life that made me to who I am because there are lots of things that have happened in my life that have shaped me.

This exercise helped clarify what I will need to do as a peer mentor to help my mentees become more self-aware as they grow into their college experience. I was told that in order to help someone else become more self-aware, I need to be able to be self-aware as well. Activities like the one we did and consistent self-reflecting are all ways that I can allow myself to be more self-aware and then in turn have the ability to talk to my mentees about their issues and occurrences that have formed them.

In my recitations this fall with my mentees, I can incorporate ‘self-awareness’ activities that will allow them to have the opportunity to self disclose what they feel. Since this is a method that helps me become more familiar with aspects about my life, I hope that they can reflect on their past experience to put things together about how they are as a person today.

The types of questions that I could ask my mentees to make them reflect more and become self aware are all questions that make them think. Questions such as asking them to look back to their childhood and remember things that may have affected their disposition in scenarios today, just as Allison had said that she was always told as a child to never speak unless she was spoken to so now she relates that to her current issue with nervousness during interviews. Another reflecting-type question could be about my mentees reflecting on their past and present relationships with people in their lives, important to or unimportant.

Three goals I have to improve self-awareness rest within the areas I have to most weaknesses which are the areas of emotional awareness. I want to be able to become more confident with myself and the way others see me. I want to be able to adjust to changes in my life with more ease. And I want to be able to have a more positive and uplifting attitude towards everything in my life.

Week 5

Happy Valentine’s Day to all!! A wonderful day to remember that no matter what, you are loved  This past week we discussed our future relationships we must establish with our mentees. Deb and Joey did an excellent job in involving the class is some active skits that helped us visualize possible scenarios we may be presented with in our future peer mentor/mentee relationships.

The chapter discussed different components to establishing and maintaining healthy relationships with our future mentees. Ground rules are outlined as honesty, commitment, boundaries, confidentiality, and expectations.

The honesty component points out the essential need for equality between the mentor and mentee in their levels of trust for each other. If we expect honesty from our mentees then we must also be honest with them. I try my hardest to be honest in all of my relationships and in return I want others to be honest with me. Relationships can be a lot deeper and clearer when there is honesty as a foundation.

Commitment is one of my biggest areas of attention when I look at relationships that I have. If I’m going to be willing to commit to someone and/or something I expect the same in return. It drives me crazy when someone says they will do something and then do not commit to it. In my opinion, having mutual commitment is one of the post important areas to establishing and maintaining a healthy relationship.

Clarifying boundaries is one of the more challenging components to a peer mentor/mentee relationship. We have to remember that even though we still are students and peer mentors we are also an authority figure. I know I want my mentees to be able to trust me and know what they can come to me with anything. I also want them to be very aware that the relationship between us should be treated as any instructor to student relationship.

The confidentiality component is another important part to a mentor/mentee relationship that kind of goes along with the honesty component. I want my mentees to be honest with me as I will be honest with them. But I also want the confidentiality to always exist within that honesty. It’s another important foundation to trust that builds a healthy relationship.

The final part to developing a healthy relationship with my mentees lies within the expectations between both of us. They expect to learn from me, trust me, and have me there for them as their mentor. They rely on my and I expect to be able to rely on them too. Even though we each have our own expectations in our peer mentor to mentee relationship, it is also important to define a line in unrealistic expectations. When we know what to expect in a relationship, it clarifies all other essentials to establishing and maintaining our healthy peer mentor/mentee relationships.

Week 4

This week’s chapter had various breakdowns to it that I found very insightful to my future peer mentor and mentee relationships.

The first breakdown addressed was the peer mentor role as a trusted friend. Building trust between yourself and your mentee is a very important initial foundation to creating a trusted friendship and a connection to the rest of the 5 roles of being a peer mentor. By creating a trusting friendship as a peer mentor, mentees will be more willing to learn from you in their college experience.

The second breakdown was the connecting link of a peer mentor. We as peer mentors have been on campus and been involved a lot more than the new mentees have. We can be there to help link our mentees to different organizations, clubs, and events that fir their interest and will benefit them all around.

The third breakdown was about being a learning coach. The idea of this role is to urge your mentees to work hard academically to meet there goals in order to successfully move on to a great career. By teaching your mentees how to learn and achieve goals they will receive character traits that are essential to many important things in their adult life.

The fourth breakdown out of the five roles of a peer mentor is the role of being a student advocate. There are going to be mentees that have issues arise that you may not be able to handle just being their peer mentor. However, as their peer mentor you are aware of the different services ISU has to offer for advising and support as well as your mentees rights and responsibilities.

The final breakdown is you role as a peer leader. This role is used to inspire goals and visions into your mentees just based on what they can see through you and what you’ve accomplished so far through your college career. When they see what all you as their mentor have accomplished and where you’re headed, your mentees will hopefully become excited about creating goals for themselves so they too can have great success in everything they aspire to.

When I was a freshman, my peer mentor did a great job of combining all of these roles and helping me through my first semester. They built a relationship with me, created connections for me as I needed them, coached me through my academics, were there as a resource for any support I needed, and inspired me to create goals and aspirations for myself in my upcoming college adventure.