Brianna Mackie
Student Support Services
Peer Mentor
23 March 2015
Ethics and Boundaries
- After going through the five different Peer Mentor roles I believe that the role that best aligns with my leadership style is student advocate. I believe this one best fits me because I love absolutely love helping people. I want to later become a teacher so caring for my students and making sure they get the help they need to succeed is huge for me. I also want to be able to provide those resources to them too so I can be able to lead them to the right direction.
- When being a Peer Mentor the biggest risk I can see for me is getting to involved with my students situations. I care a lot about people and I love being able to help them with their problems so creating that boundary between personal and work related would definitely be a challenge for me. I believe that as a Peer Mentor we have to be careful what personal feelings we give them and when they tell us something personal just be careful to your response or by telling them any personal related stories in relation to their problem. Also creating that boundary for yourself not to feel to deep into their situations when say something like they are going through a financial situations with not going out of your way just to find money to be able to help them or if its more personal like family just know that you can try to help but its not your job to fix it because you are here as a role model not a parent.
- The three important Peer Mentor relationship that are important to me are passion, open-minded, and professionalism. I believe passion is a huge one because you need to be passionate about your job and your role as a Peer Mentor in order to succeed and be able to help incoming freshman. Also having passion for your students and caring about them is huge too. Being open-minded is important because you will be dealing with students from all different backgrounds and ethnicity so you have to be open and not be judgmental either. I feel like I have always been open-minded because I want my students to be able to come and talk to me about anything and making sure they are comfortable with it too. If they cant see this its going to make it really hard for them to even open up to you too. Professionalism is important because you have to set boundaries when talking about certain subjects and making sure your showing respect to for what they have to say and to them individually. You can be their friend but also be professional about it because this is your job too.
I think I might definitely have a problem with getting too involved, because I am always wanting to help people in every way I can. As a returning peer mentor, how do you feel it went this past year and what would you suggest in order to keep a nice line between personal and work life? Like you said, we have to be careful with what we tell students in regards to our own experiences and how we can relate to them. Also, I completely agree with being open-minded and accepting, because there are so many people with such different backgrounds and life experiences, so we have to be careful not to judge just because it may be different.
ReplyDeleteStudent advocate is an awesome role! I agree that helping people is one of the most rewarding things a person can do. I'm sure you'll do great! I think many of us are worried about getting to involved with our students' situations'. It can be hard not to when you really want to help them. That's where professionalism comes into play though, we will learn how to avoid that. But definitely, passion and being open minded are very important!
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, passion is an important quality to have as a peer mentor. If our heart isn't in it and we don't enjoy helping other students most likely we are not giving 100%. I've never been a peer mentor, but I know it is definitely a role I would like to fill. I'm excited and can't wait to be a peer mentor. Also, open-minded is important. One thing I love about university life is the diversity. So many people from different backgrounds with one common goal of pursuing a higher education. How awesome is that!!!
ReplyDeleteI definitely am also a student advocate so I totally agree that getting too involved in students lives could be difficult, even though we talked about not getting too close in class I think it'll be a struggle to not be solving their problems and instead guiding them to answers. Hopefully by helping each other we can all set these boundaries effectively!
ReplyDeleteI think that you're absolutely right when it comes to being considerate about other people's feelings. We need to be careful with how we word things because we do not want to seem like we are coming off rudely or insincere. I don't think that you will have an issue with this, as you laden like you are truly passionate about becoming a peer mentor.
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