Read about this mentor’s experience of her first mentoring session:

Well readers, my first day in the introduction session for this topic was like walking into uncertainty but such is life, there is a always a first time for everything. I enjoyed the lecture which was introduced by Sandra and I shall definitely be looking forward to every Wednesday of the week because I guess its going to get more interesting. In my own understanding “Peer Mentoring” can be the building of  personal or academic relationship between an individual (who is seen as a role model) with another. There are some core qualities that a good mentor is supposed to have for the relationship to be successful, which can be classed as the “Do’s” and “Don’ts” and most of them were listed by mentors during the lecture. Some of the “Do’s” includes

• Patient and tolerant
• Respect
• Confidentiality
• Empathy and so on, and these qualities are the pivot in mentoring.

What made me a little nervous about the practical side of the course was that, I have never really mentored an adult on an academic level, I have always worked with children which is my comfort zone, so I was a bit on the edge about how the first meeting with the mentees will be like, so I thought of relying on the support of the other 7 mentors. After arriving, we waited for a while for the mentees to come, after they have settled, one brave mentor started the introduction process which was kicked off by us the 8 mentors followed by the mentees who were more than 20 in number. To my greatest surprise, it went on really well because we engaged them in a game called “would you rather be” each mentor read out a given question from an iPad for them to choose what they preferred to be which allowed all the mentees to engage with each other and with us the mentors.

They were later given pieces of papers to write down literally burning questions that they needed answers to and they all did and brought the folded papers forward. Each of the mentors then took each and read out the questions and answered it.  It was a good session because we were all engaged and most of the answered questions brought some relief to the first year students. As we all know that working into an unfamiliar situation is always not the best feeling in the world. In my own case, I am just going to learn on the job, which simply means that having no previous experience about mentors in year 1, I am looking forward to helping the mentees with every little academic and personal knowledge I have acquired in this journey of life.

I shall keep you updated as the weeks goes by….