Peer Mentor Reflection #6

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.

 

Peer Mentor Reflection #5

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.

Peer Mentor Reflection #4

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.

Peer Mentor Reflection #3

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!