I think I would be most aligned with being a "connecting link" peer mentor. I feel I'll be like that because I love being resourceful to others especially when they don't know of their surroundings. I enjoy it when others look for me with questions that I can help by guiding them in the right direction. When my sister became a freshman at my high school, I felt a lot of responsibility to make it seem like it's fun and it'll all be okay. I was proud when showing her around campus and presenting her to my friends. She became comfortable. She's now a sophomore at another high school and she missing our old high school to the point of saving up money to buy a car and drive 10 minutes to it every morning. I would really love having my mentees coming to me with question and me showing them that they made a great choice on coming to NAU. Of course, I would present all the resources that would make their classes much easier too. I know that in the first year of being in college students often have doubts in whether or not they made a good choice on coming to that specific college and that's mainly because of how they haven't found the resources they need, whether it's how to pass class with a good grade or making friends. I see myself as helping students connect with NAU.
I do see, however, some risks coming into play if I'm not careful. One of these would be wanting to perfect in everything I do and probably stressing myself out because of school and by trying to always be helping my mentees out. I'm also afraid of them being too dependent on me that they won't try to find answers on their own and waiting for me to give them all the answers. A risk I didn't see in the article would be that sometimes I probably won't have the answers to what they ask and I'm afraid they won't want to ask me any questions or tell me much.
Three values I see as the most important would probably be open mindedness, trust, and honesty. Having an open mind is crucial because I may encounter some students that won't come from the same background that I do. For the student, they should probably be open minded to new things that I may offer and could make their things better. Trust is very important because I need to be able to open up a bit so they can too and I can help them. They also need to trust me because that's the only way of me helping them. Honesty is always important but especially in this because if they're going to trust me, then I should be honest. Also, they should be honest about what's really going on with their lives.
I totally agree with you on the possible risks. In regards to the stress factors, I wrote about that within my own blog. But something I should have considered more is the risk of dependency. My main goal for students is to learn how to succeed on their own and if students become dependent on help, they aren't learning their own future success strategies. Thanks for your post!
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