MENTOR

In 1st year I was a mentee then in the 2nd year I volunteered to be a mentor.  I was really keen to do that because I wanted to give something back and I wanted someone else to have the experience I’d already had as a mentee myself, so I was matched with a 1st year consumer studies student and I thought that went really well.

Well this year I’ve been a mentor for a girl in 1st year on the same course as me.    It’s not something that I was involved in in my 1st year, I found out through an email sent round.  Actually a friend of mine became interested in it and she said to me ‘this looks great’ and drew my attention to it.  After that when I investigated I thought it was a great thing to be involved in.

I think being a mentee, then becoming a mentor its given me a lot of experience so I know what its like to be a mentee, I know all the questions, how apprehensive people can be.  Becoming a mentor, effectively, will allow me to use some of the insight I’ve gained from being a mentee back to someone else who is coming in fresh, new, green, nervous, unsure of what university life is all about.

You need to be friendly and approachable to your mentee but also be reliable, definitely.  I’m not the most punctual person in the world, and I felt quite bad on a couple of occasions for being late.   It was also made more apparent by the fact that my mentee was entirely punctual, very, very good at timekeeping!  And that’s just a small aspect of making sure they know they’ve got someone to rely on, someone approachable, someone you can talk to.  At the end of the day I ended up being friends with my mentee, we got on really well, it was more like a formal friendship rather than a mentee – mentor situation.  And I think that’s it, just have a good relationship with your mentee or mentor.