Q: How did you get to be a senior mentor?
A: I really wanted to put myself out there and freshmen can have a hard time adjusting to high school. I really want to give them my point of view for all of them, from all perspectives.
Q: What kind of perspectives do you want to give?
A: From the friend perspective, homework perspective and how to handle missing work. I wasn’t the best student, but over the years I’ve learned how to be a good student.
Q: Walk me through some of the planning that you do for mentoring?
A: We’re given a schedule that we must follow. Sometimes we have to pick up papers from Miss Strain’s classroom and we use these papers. It could be an icebreaker, it could be a get to know you game or just some sort of goal setting. It’s really fun to hear all the answers from everyone.
Q: What sort of activities do you do?
A: So most of the [activities] we did at the beginning of the year were get to know you [activities]. One of the activities was which fruit do you identify the most as? So a personality quiz. It was really cool to see how everyone thought differently. Another activity we did was goal setting. Goal setting is very important, whether it be short term or long term, because that gives you a sort of motivation. You also have to put the steps on how you’re gonna complete that, and it’s great to see freshmen setting goals, because most freshmen don’t set goals.
Q: How did you get interested in senior mentoring?
A: I got interested because I really just wanted to push myself and just bond with freshmen because freshmen are cool sometimes. Stepping out of my box is something that I never do. I don’t like socializing, but senior mentoring has given me that ability to put myself out there.
Q: When did you hear about senior mentoring, excluding freshman year, when you had it?
A: As a senior I thought, that looks like really fun. And I just really wanted to do it because it’ll be fun and I’ll bond with them. I learned about it mostly through the presentation at [course preview]. And I learned more about it through my counselors and they all told me to do it because it’ll be a really good experience and also looks good on college applications.
Q: How has your experience as a senior mentor been so far?
A: It’s been pretty cool I would say. The freshman I got placed with really opened my eyes to some subjects.
Q: Can you tell me how a usual mentoring session would go?
A: We all break off into our groups and we either go outside or we stay in the classroom, but we all group together. I ask how everyone’s day is, and then we go on to the schedule, and I let everyone speak once. I ask them random questions to get to know them more.
Q: What challenges have you faced and how did you overcome some being a senior mentor?
A: Sometimes freshmen are hard to deal with because they’re experiencing a new change and they’re going through a lot, and I’ve had to overcome some of their attitudes. I don’t think they treat me as well as I hoped, because they talk over me a lot, and I have to tell them to stop talking, but they’ve gotten a lot better.
Q: How do you tailor your approach for different types of people that you’re mentoring?
A: So, usually what I do is not only in senior mentoring, but just in life. What I do is I match their energy, because matching energy shows them that I’m not weird. It kind of helps me personally because it helps me get to know them better and get to know how their mind works.
Q: What advice would you give to someone who wants to be a senior mentor?
A: I would definitely say if you wanted to be a senior mentor, make sure you are ready to not have the most perfect freshmen, nobody’s perfect. You have to prepare for that because freshmen are going through a lot, and you must be understanding of what they may be going through.
by VIC RIGDON AND SHANE SUNDSTROM
