Posts

Weeks 11-12: October 29th –  November 9th

This week was our final week in survey class — and, as another peer mentor pointed at to me, my last survey class ever! I’ll be graduating in a few short weeks (5 and a half, but who’s counting?), which makes me reflect on the past four years. This semester as a peer mentor has been different from last in that I feel like less of a peer. While the freshmen are just starting to acclimate to college, I’m about to leave and acclimate to the working world, followed by the graduate school world. I feel like I’m about to enter a new chapter in my life (just as the freshmen are) but I feel much more prepared and ready to do so than I felt coming into college. I’ve learned so much about myself — my strengths and weaknesses, my career interests, and my passions.

I’m also very thankful for my peer mentor experiences because they helped me realize my passion for helping students adjust to college. I’ve enjoyed being able to listen to students’ unique stories and suggest resources that may be beneficial to them. These experiences have helped me realize that I want to pursue a career in higher education and student affairs, with a goal of perhaps even ending up in academic advising! I hope I can take the skills I learned through my peer mentor experiences (specifically, serving students and evaluating programs to support students) and apply them in my graduate school assistantships and beyond.

Weeks 9-10: October 15th – 26th

Week 9:

This week was extremely stressful for me. I have been working on graduate school applications and finding a job for the spring semester while also juggling my current coursework — I have 3 exams just this week! I also picked up a seasonal part-time retail job and began to realize that maybe this wasn’t the best time to do so. I met with my advisor and she listened to me as I vented and helped me realize that I need to practice what I preach in terms of self-care — it was just last week that I gave a presentation about mental health to my survey class! I decided to take a break from this new job and take things one at a time.

Week 10:

After a relaxing weekend, I can safely say that I’m feeling much less stressed about everything that’s on my plate right now! Also, this week in peer mentor training, we discussed our internship experiences that we’ve had during summer breaks. I found that reflecting on my past experiences helped me see how I got to the place I am today. They also helped me step back and think about all that I’ve accomplished at OSU. Even though college life can be stressful, I wouldn’t have wished it to be any different because I grew and learned from each experience.

Weeks 7-8: October 1st – 12th

Over the past few weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time creating my internship project about mental health resources on campus. After meeting with my advisor to brainstorm and plan the project, I decided to create a PowerPoint presentation to share in class and an informational brochure that lists the locations and website links for each of the resources I discussed. Students will be able to access these materials on their Carmen Canvas page so they can have easy access to it. I shared my presentation in class and even though it was the day before fall break and students were eager to head home, I feel that the presentation went well. I organized an activity where students paired up and shared some “happy” things about their day and some “crappy”things — despite the silliness of the activity, I think they enjoyed it, and it got students talking with each other and sharing both good and bad news.

I also held my second peer mentor event this week. I went with several students down to the Short North (we rode the COTA so they could practice using the bus system) and had coffee at Mission Coffee. I had decided to limit the number of students who could attend the event to 3 to encourage an organic discussion and this seemed to be effective. The girls were all chatty with each other and seemed comfortable sharing stories about their hometowns and their transitions to OSU.

Weeks 5-6: September 17th – 28th

This week we had the Transition Challenge activity, wherein peer mentors share an aspect of the college transition that they struggled with and describe how they handled the situation. I shared my experiences struggling with depression and anxiety and how they made me feel lost, isolated, and even scared. I wanted to share my story to help normalize mental health disorders, especially when they’re so common in college students, and to promote help-seeking (I attended mental health counseling and this was very helpful!).

While I was nervous about opening up to a large group of people about something so personal, I was pleasantly surprised by the conversation that followed — several students raised their hands and shared their own experiences with mental health disorders and asked for advice on coping and seeking counseling. It is important to have these conversations to help break the stigma surrounding mental health!

Weeks 3-4: September 3rd – 14th

Week 3:

This week in class, the peer mentors helped lead small group discussions with students about time management. Compared to last fall semester, I felt more comfortable facilitating a group discussion. During our conversations, I heard several concerns that I remember struggling with my freshman year. For example, one student pointed out that there were so many different aspects of her life that it was important to devote time to and she couldn’t cut down any of the activities. I realized that the students seemed to be struggling to find a balance among all their activities.

I have also been working on my peer mentor internship project. I would like to create a presentation and brochure about mental health and campus resources that can help students maintain their wellness. Currently, I am struggling most with brainstorming an interactive activity that allows students to talk openly about mental health in a casual, non-intimidating way.

Week 4:

I led my first peer mentor event this week! I attended a Candlelight Yoga class with a couple students. I felt like I had improved my ability to both make conversation with the students about their college experiences and to make the students feel comfortable sharing them. For example, one student felt comfortable enough to vent to us about the problems she was having with her roommate. At the end of the event, I was happy to see that the two students who attended my event exchanged phone numbers so that they could hang out again.

In class this week, the peer mentors led “Communication at the University” skits. Several students in class volunteered to help out act out the “good” versions of the skits. I was happy to see the students wanting to be involved in the activity (none of the students in the survey class I was a peer mentor in last year wanted to participate – they were much quieter than my current group).

Weeks 1-2: August 20th-September 3rd

The Autumn 2018 semester has now begun! This is something that hit me when I had to weave through hundreds of freshmen cluttered on campus while traveling to the first Peer Mentor training of the year. Many of them were eager for new beginnings: new ways to advance their academic careers, new clubs and organizations to join, and new friendships to create, all while exploring a new campus and/or city. The first-year student excitement was evident in the way the freshmen chattered in their first survey class. I found this to be a pleasant surprise and in sharp contrast to the survey class I Peer Mentor-ed in last year–where, even at the end of the semester, students didn’t converse much with each other and when they did, their conversations remained hushed.

With all this new-ness, there should be an organized way to familiarize students with campus resources, right? In comes survey class. The first week was spent introducing students to the survey course syllabus and expectations while the second week launched into an outline of GE requirements. As I listened to my survey instructor field questions, I realized how far I have come in my own journey at OSU. While I could faintly remember having the same questions as the freshmen at one point and time, that time seemed forever ago and I now know the answers by heart. This realization increased my confidence in my ability to provide first-year students advice on both the big and small things–extending from ASC honors GE requirements all the way up to big college and life questions, like “What’s the point of taking a literature class if I want to be a doctor?” and  “What kind of career can I have so I can help as many people as possible?” After the first two weeks of Peer Mentor-ing, I became extra excited about helping students out and interacting more with them.