Becoming a Role Model-Week 7

This week was about becoming a role model as a peer mentor. As was brought up in class, this chapter had us focus on peer mentors in our lives. My sister was the one I shared in class. She is only six years older than me and it feels like she has so much more accomplished in life then me. She is wonderful. The main part of this chapter was in the common values of successful peer mentors. I think my strongest values on the list are gratitude and kindness. My weakest ones are choice and purpose. The activity Amy and Rachel had us do in class was very interactive and made us think. That is where I came up with the strong and weak values. I think that knowing this about myself will help me improve and be a better role model in the fall. I feel like I used to be a lot more responsible than I am now. For some reason, if I don’t write something down, I forget it. That is why I keep such a detailed schedule. I guess that is something I can share with the future students that goes through the same thing. Choice is a hard one for me because I am so indecisive. The power to choose your own responses to things that happen to you. My goal with this one is to choose to have a positive attitude when I go to class in the fall. I want to be excited about class, so that the students can be excited as well. I think that I need some self confidence to help with purpose. It seems like I get down a lot and like I’m not good enough. I definitely ask the question, why am I doing this? I think if I can start answering that question, I will discover more of what I want. Well I better not type your eyes out, I’ll see you all on Tuesday.

Self Awareness-Week 6

This week was focused on self-awareness. I think that this is an important topic because you should know yourself and why you are the way you are. If you know yourself you can help others know themselves. My role in helping the incoming students become more self-aware is to encourage them on the importance. The book says that people who struggle with self-awareness do not recognize how their choices affect their lives. Self-awareness is has a lot to do with the success, especially as a student. I can help the students be more self aware by… 1) knowing myself. How can I help and teach something that I don’t know myself? 2) Discuss topics such as habits of mind, habits of mind can be good or bad, so I will discuss both and help the students recognize what they are and how they can change them if they feel that they need to. This will hopefully help for students to think in a different way. I guess a good question to go with that would be, what do you hope to get out of the class? (Some example answers could be…a good grade, a relationship with the professor, an easy A, the knowledge the class has to teach, or make friends with fellow students). All of these answers can be discussed to help the student identify with why they said that answer and with hearing other people’s answers they can hopefully learn to view the classroom in a different way.

I like the activity that Anthony and Beth had us do about why we are the way we are. I think we all learned a lot about each other and a lot about ourselves. I actually kind of went through something like that when I went through counseling at Student Counseling Services. I found out why I am such a perfectionist and why I establish relationships the way I do. I think that SCS would be a great place to refer students if they feel that they are having trouble being self-aware.

3 goals to improve my self-awareness:

1) Set up a sleeping pattern that allows me to get between 7 and 8 hours of sleep a night if possible. This would mean that I would need to get homework and studying done a little sooner so that I am not cramming the night before.
2) Get regular exercise by waking up a little earlier and doing Wii Fit at least twice a week. I bought it for this reason and I really should start doing it.
3) Start a savings account. I have enough money for one because of my scholarships and working. I need to save money and not spend it on “toys”.

Notice that most of my goals have to do with physical awareness. This one definitely got away from me after high school when I wasn’t in sports and doing high school classes anymore.

Well I guess that is enough for this week. I will continue to discover my self-awareness, so that I will be able to help the students discover theirs as well.

See you all on Tuesday everybody!

Difficult Dialogues-Week 5

So I went to my diversity event this week called difficult dialogues and managing conflict. It was in the memorial union and only about 10-15 people were there. Maybe about 5 students and the others were staff and interested others. Paul Ladehoff was the presenter and he is interim Assistant Dean for Admissions, Career Development and Student Services at the MU School of Law. It was a session that focused on what a difficult dialogue is and what to do with them.

I discovered that difficult dialogues involve more than just talking about sexuality, race, gender, politics, religion or others things people identify with. It can be any conversation that makes someone feel embarrassed, uncomfortable, or feel like they are being judged. This can be as simple as being called on in class, or telling someone bad news. That means that we engage in a lot more difficult dialogues then we thought. This can probably be worse with introverts because they may find themselves in conversations in which people expect them to talk and they don’t want to, which can lead them to feeling uncomfortable. I found this subject very interesting in the session. One subject that was brought up was, as a dialogue facilitator, as we will be when we bring up discussion points in recitation in the fall, what do we hope will happen in the discussion and what to we fear? This really got me thinking. As mentors to incoming students we can have very uncomfortable discussions and topics to cover. I fear that we may hit a breaking point for a student. Like if we get on the discussion of being homesick, or undeclared majors, or even stress management that someone could have a personal connection to. I hope that the students will feel better after the discussion and be encouraged to ask for help or try something different in their lives.

The facilitator gave us some facilitating strategies that I would love to share with whoever asks. He also gave us a list of guidelines for controversial conversations and even some signs and emotions to watch out for if something is getting too deep. I even found myself feeling a little uncomfortable when someone was talking about people storming out of conversations. It seems like every get-together in my family someone does that. I think that really helped me to pay attention and want to learn from this session.

I really learned a lot in this session about what to watch out for and how to facilitate these kinds of conversations. I really wish more people could have attended this so I could bounce ideas off of them. I guess the only question I would have right now is about me. What motivates my emotions in difficult dialogues and what is the goal I am trying to get through? I think with the students in the fall it is the dialogue goal. I want others to understand and appreciate the genuine differences of everyone.

Well that was a quick look at difficult dialogues. If anyone wants to see the handouts he gave us to learn more information, let me know!

Roles and Relationships-Week 5

This week was all about our role as a peer mentor and the relationship we hold with the mentees. Nick and Kelly did a good job at showing us our roles as peer mentors. It is important to know what is expected of us as mentors. We are to be trusted friend to the new students, someone that they can rely on. We are to be a connecting link, someone who can help students be part of the college community. I can use my experiences with student government and my many other extracurriculars to get the students more involved. I will be a learning coach and I will show the new students various study tips and note taking skills that can help them adjust to the differences of college from high school. I will be a student advocate, someone support the students and refer them to help if they need it. As a past peer mentor, I know how important this one can be. I had a student go through a very rough time their first semester. The only way Heather and I found out about this is through our 1 on 1’s. I really encourage other peer mentors to understand this role. It is really important. The last role is that I will be a peer leader. The book described this by saying we should demonstrate our successes. This is why I went to the interviewing break our session at ISLE. I want to be a reliable source to the mentees with careers. I need to step up in my career for this. As for my leadership activities on campus, I think that the students will be inspired by the things I have done and I will encourage them to get involved as well. I will go with them if I am able and show them tips and other resources I may have.

The other part of this week was the relationships we hold with the mentees. How are we going to act in the different situations that we are put in. Joey and I focused on three ground roles that we are expected to keep as peer mentors. The first was commitment. As peer mentors the students look up to us as a trusted friend so we must follow through with what we say we are going to do. The second was confidentiality, although the skit did not go as planned, it still made a good point about us being student advocates and learning coaches. On the confidentiality side, we are supposed to keep what students tell us in private to ourselves unless a safety factor in involved. They tell us things in private for a reason and we should not judge them or tell others what they say. The last one we focused on in class was the boundaries between us as mentors and the mentees. This one was my favorite! It was fun to see Greg pretend to be a girl. The point was made though. We need to recognize the situation when a line might be crossed. It is important to know what you are going to do if something were to come up. The other ground rules that were in the book honesty (if you expect the students to be honest with you, you must be honest with them, they are going though the same thing you just went through, don’t pretend that you haven’t), and expectations (know your students, help them do their best without making them feel like they have to live up to your expectations. They have their own.) I think the skits are a great way to have some fun, learn something, and be interactive. I think they went over well. The last thing that was focused on is why we are peer mentors. Students will respond better to your efforts if they understand your motives. A lot of people recognized that they are peer mentors partially because they reacted well to their peer mentors. It was great to see the cycle and realize the relationships that we had with others will affect the relationships we have in the future. I am a peer mentor because I loved Michael and Leah and they really helped me my first semester here. I think it is really important to give back and helping people transition is a great way to do it.

Ok I wrote way too much this week and I really wanted to write more. I guess I’ll see you all on Tuesday!

Defining Roles-Week 4

There was a lot of information in this chapter about what us as mentors are to students and what the student’s role is. The first thing that really stood out to me in the chapter was the section on how my habits can affect my mentoring. They said “habit supports and guides your personal success as well as the success of your students”. That just sounds deep. After 3 years of being in college, I still feel that I am not quite up on my study habits. I have definitely improved, but we all know how hard it is in college. My schedule changes, my time changes. I have learned that I work on school better during the day then in the afternoon. I purposely schedule about 2 hour breaks between classes if possible because then I can do my homework between classes. I am looking forward to sharing this tip with the incoming students. The work habit section kind of confused me. I didn’t really see how it applied to work, but I guess it fit with working out, another thing that I really need to work on. I think I am pretty good on the thinking habits. I definitely ask questions all the time and figure out more than one way of doing things. “You fail to plan, you plan to fail”. I think I am pretty good at this too. I chose to blog about this subject because I can see a lot of room in improvement. The rest of the chapter I have kind of already experienced. I think that the hardest thing role is the being a student advocate. It is difficult to identify when a student may be having problems outside of the class. I recommend doing 1 on 1’s with your students. Last time Heather and I did this and we discovered one of our students was going through some really tough things, things that we could not even image. I think it is difficult to see some things because we aren’t with the students all that much. We don’t know how they were before the class, so what we see may be different, but we can’t see it. The last thing I need to improve on is my attitude. I should always come in with a positive attitude no matter how my day is going like the fish principle. Have a good week everyone!