Mentorship Program Reflection
Throughout the 2021-2022 academic year, I had the pleasure of meeting and mentoring Mollie Couch. Mollie is a Psychology major from Ohio and has a big family that means a lot to her. At the start of the year, Mollie was worried about being away from family for large chunks of time and was having trouble getting involved and finding the right groups for her. Throughout the year, I watched her grow and find her place at OSU: within ACES and her fraternity, Omega Gamma, which centers itself around Mental Health awareness and Inclusion.
I loved getting to know her. As psych majors, we have a lot of interests in common, but I loved to learn about what she wanted to do with her psych degree after college. Mollie is interested in continuing in social work and is passionate about non profit work. At the beginning of the year, she thought she might want to go to grad school in psych and being a psychiatrist or psychologist, but as she progressed, she realized that is not what she wants.
Being a mentor was a rewarding experience. While me and Mollie did not become the best of friends, it was a fun and new experience for me and I enjoyed sharing what I know with Mollie about resources, tips for undergrad, and all about ACES as a first year student. I encourages Mollie to reach out to organizations that she wanted to get involved in, as that is the hardest part! I also let her know about all of the free resources we have as buckeyes like career counseling, free workout classes at the RPAC and all of the great deals on d-tix! I grew a lot as the Member Relations Co-Chair with Hannah. We learned a lot about the challenges surrounding mentorship and grew in our leadership abilities.
Mentoring programs have a great number of benefits and allow older students, peers, or those with more experience, give advice and guidance to younger peers. Within ACES, creating bonds between 1st and 2nd year members is vital to create the sense of community that we need to accomplish our goals in serving our larger community and to be better advocates and volunteers as a group. I am happy that I participate in the program and that I took on a leading role as the co-chair as it ended up being a crucial part of my experience as a second year in the ACES program.
Pictured above is Mollie and I our first time meeting each other at Mirror Lake to conduct our First Semester Interview.