Over the past year, I’ve loved getting to know my first year mentee, Rachel Goetz. She is a nursing major, sociology minor from Mason, Ohio. What was really exciting is that we seemed to have a lot in common. Rachel expressed to me so many times that nursing is really one of the only fields she could picture herself being in and that, once she figured out she wanted to be a nurse, nothing else made sense. That is exactly how I felt with social work. I could not picture myself doing any other job than being a social worker. We both are really excited about service and doing community work. Rachel is involved in a nursing student organization as well as Cru and ACES, in which she builds relationships and does service work. I am also involved in some service organizations on campus and have really enjoyed working with other students in the community over the past two years.
Despite some of our similarities as to why we got into the fields we have chosen, we do have some differences in the paths we want to take. I am not very set on a specific field of social work, and have really enjoyed learning about the different settings that social workers can be in and the diversity within the field. Rachel, on the other hand, is really set on being a pediatric nurse and knows that she definitely wants to work with kids! I’m so excited for her that she has found her calling and that she knows how she is going to pursue that passion!
It was really fun seeing Rachel grow from first to second semester. Since first semester she has grown in her friendships with other ACES students and students she met from other organizations. She has continued to develop her passion for nursing as she has completed more and more classes. She has also discovered some other interests, as she has picked up a sociology minor, to learn more about the issues that exist in our health system and other systems within our country and world.
Along the same vein, I have also grown a lot over the past year, as a mentor, leader, and student. It has been really great to learn from Rachel and to be inspired by her drive and her passion for serving others. I have learned how to be an example as a student and developed my relationship building skills. It has been great to learn through mentorship, to gain more experience being a leader. I have been able to develop a relationship with someone who can somewhat look up to me and come to me for advice and learn from my experiences. I have learned how to use my mistakes and regrets to help others take a different path.
Honestly, I did not have to do much to help Rachel in terms of socializing. She was very excited to get involved from day one and has made many friends and cultivated relationships. I was able to encourage her to seek other ways of building relationships and was able to offer some insight into how I made friends in the past. Another part of the experience was validating that the college experience can be difficult sometimes, especially during such an unprecedented time. I was able to tell Rachel that I experienced difficulties too and was also feeling the effects of the pandemic on my experience as well.
There were so many benefits to this program! I felt like I was able to make a fruitful connection to my mentee and learned a lot from the experience. It was great to get to know a first year, especially since I was not able to know many of them due to COVID. I hope my experience was as impactful on Rachel as it was for me!