Week 3: Defining Roles, LC Institute, and ISLE

This week for out blogs we were required to analyze the reading to see how it pertains to our work as peer mentors. Their are many important roles a peer mentor has when impacting the lives of students. One of the more important roles to me is being a trusted friend. Not being trustworthy can have a huge impression on the way somebody perceives you. When I was a new student here at Iowa State, being trustworthy was one of the most important things I based a person on. If I felt like a could trust someone, I could establish a larger relationship with that person. I also thought the connecting link was very important. In our first semester I felt like there was places that I just naturally belonged, whether it was with a group of friends or an experience I enjoyed. Being a learning coach was very important for the peer mentors that mentored me as a first year student. I was taught fundamentals, learning strategies, and time management skills that really helped me to succeed in my first year. Being a leader was also very important for my peer mentor when I was a freshmen. They stepped up and took the challenge to help new students get through their first semester. I acknowledged that they were someone that has been through these first year experiences and they are somebody I could trust to lead me to success.

Last Friday, I attended the Learning Institute. I went to the session, "Underprepared vs Underperforming." In this session we defined what really was being underprepared which referred to as students who's academic skills fall below those needed to be successful in college. We defined underperforming as a student who appears to have an academic background to be successful in college courses, but in actuality, that person is not seeing positive results. During the session we went through a few assumptions, one being that the problem lies within the high schools ineffectively preparing students for college education. We split into different sections of the group to figure out if we agreed or disagreed. It was very interesting to listen to the reasoning from both faculty and students from their point of view on this particular assumption.

On Saturday I attended ISLE. I enjoyed listening to the keynote speaker talking to us about relationships and just general things pertaining to life. It was very engaging and informative. After that I went to the session on interviewing. It's not that I'm terrible at interviewing, it's just that I could do much better to prepare myself for future reference. I learned new ways to dress, begin, and end an interview that I would have never known without attending. It was very helpful in not only preparing myself for an interview but for events in the future.