Week 3 Blog

Hello everyone. Hope everyone is enjoying the third week of school. I thought this weeks class was really enjoyable. I learned a lot about myself and my personality type which I thought was really neat. When we did the Myer-Briggs Type Indicator as freshmen, I got ENFP. This year I was suprised to get the same thing. I assumed as a year passed and I transitioned to college I might have changed the ways I think and go about situations, but just goes to show changing someones personality is at most, impossible.93 I thought it was hard to believe how much this report goes in to depth of our preferences and choices just from our answers especially since some of our answers consisted of just choosing one word from the two words provided. I thought the type indicator was even precise in the way they broke each category down into even more sub-categories showing whether they were in-preference or out-of-preference. In almost each one I had an out-of-preference or midzone facet that which I believed was almost right each time.187

Before class I was excited to see my results along with everyone else's and the types of personalities that I may possibly be mentoring with next fall. I thought it was cool to see how different the clarity of preferences were for some people especially Debra. It seem like every one of her preferences in the type indicator were very clear or at least clear, unlike mine which all but one were in the slight clear area. I enjoyed the class activities and like hearing everyone's reaction towards the questions. It appeared as though all of the individuals in the same groups had the same outlooks on each question. I also got the notion that all the groups went about each question differently, especially the judging and percieving section with the early starters and the pressure prompted groups. This week was really fun and enjoyed learning about myself and everyone else in the class. See you next week.

Week 2 Blog

Chapter 2 was about helping make students make the transition to college which I feel was one of the chapters that I had most in common with. It contained many of the factors that I had to deal with as a freshman here last year. I could relate to many of the concepts and it brought back how I felt about all the new situations and new things that were happening as I myself transitioned to college. The biggest part of this chapter to me was the section on how college is different from high school. There are so many huge differences between the two. Some may affect certain people, yet those that affect one certain group of people will have no affect on another person. For me it was the different teaching styles and how to better manage my time. In high school I really never did anything, but as all of you know once in college you have to try in order to get the grade you want. Some new freshman students already know this, yet they may have trouble adjusting towards a better way to manage their time.
This week me and Greg started the class and it went much better than I had thought it would. I feel like we had many good discussions about each different section in the book. Leading a class for 25 minutes was a little different for me. I found out many of us had different outlooks on subjects. I also found out through the discussions that every one of us made our own different transition to college and that we will each have to deal with our mentees in different ways in order to be successful peer mentors. As the freshman students next fall develop into college students we to will also develop in our own way.

Week 1 Blog

The first chapter in the book, Becoming a Peer Mentor, created a background as towards the definition and types of roles of what a mentor is and does. I like the start of the chapter where they give a real situation with a real person and it made me think how I would deal with the situation if it was me or someone that needed help that I knew. It also gives synonyms for mentor which can include guide, advisor, counselor, and teacher. Any of these words are what I would be able to use to describe what I thought of my peer mentors when I was a freshman last year.

The chapter also challenges you to quiz yourself on how confident you are with mentoring knowledge and skills. This made me think about how capable I will be of becoming a mentor and the knowledge that I will yet need to gain in order to become an effective teacher and listener. This made me realize the different number of roles that that I will have to fulfill in order to become a good mentor in this program.

Towards the end of the chapter it talks about motivation; whether you are self-focused, other-focused, or both. After reading thet rest of the paragraph I began to think about my motivation and where it came from. Being too much self-focused will cause you to ignore your students, but being to much other-focused will cause you to devote to much time for others and not for yourself. Both of these circumstances will cause a problem in your quest to becoming a good peer mentor. I found that you must create a balance between both to be more successful in the long run.

I'm trying to remember what we did in class, but the one thing that stuck in my head was going over the syllabus which clarified a lot for me and helped me create an idea for myself how much time Iwill need to devote for this program. Learning everyone's else's names will probably be the most time consuming, but I think I can handle it.

I know that in the past with classes and other college activities I will need to manage my time appropriately for school as well as taking care of my responsiblities as a mentor in the fall. I believe I will have to manage time better so I will be able to balance school and being a mentor at the same time.