A Summary of My Mentoring Experience Hey everyone! My name is Dan Martin and I am a senior applied mathematics/psychology major here at the University of Rhode Island. One of the main organizations that I am involved in is Housing and Residential Life. I can easily say that my experience as a Resident Advisor (RA) for the past three years has had the biggest impact on me, both personally and professionally. In fact, these great experiences are why I decided to become a URI 101 mentor in the first place. While I was originally in a freshman residence hall (Butterfield Hall) for my first two years, I transferred to be and RA in the upperclassmen apartments in Wiley for my fourth and final year as an undergraduate. While I was elated in regards to this great opportunity, I felt that I would miss that wonderful feeling that came with helping first year students successfully transition into college life. To make a long story short, I earned a position as a mentor with a great person and my supervisor at the Academic Enhancement Center, David Hayes. |
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Even with all
of my experiences helping freshmen adjust through RAing and tutoring for
a year, I still felt nervous leading up into my first class. Even
though I have interacted with students through similar experiences, I
have never been that much of a "facilitator" in charge of a class.
Combine that with a little stage fright and it can make anyone nervous.
Luckily I knew David for over a year and he has been a great resource in
helping me feel more at ease with what we are doing in class. After the
first class, I felt relieved in that I had a good grasp with everyone's
names and it did not seem like the students "hated" the time we had
just spent in class. In addition to leading a class taking me out of my comfort zone, another great experience mentoring has given me is experiencing diversity to the fullest extent. Over the years I have been through numerous diversity training sessions (every semester for both RAing and tutoring), and I cannot help but notice how much diversity this campus lacks to a point where there might be only 2 or 3 minority students in a class of 40 or more. In our learning community of "wanting business" for URI 101, 16 students out of 20 were enrolled in Talent Development, a program that helps to give students of color and disadvantaged students a chance to earn a college education. This ratio is obviously significantly above what is normally seen on campus and while this initially took some adjustment, I can honestly say that it has been a very unique and humbling experience and I love every minute of it. Regardless of a classroom's diversity, each section will be different and must be treated as such. It took a few weeks of adjusting, but David and I have been able to tailor the curriculum around the individual class' needs and interests. In particular, our class is much more "active" and is not content with just sitting around and listening to just one person talk or discuss. We tried to circumvent this through active participation in activities that promote movement and energy, and we also tried to take the class out on the quad occasionally as well. To conclude, my mentoring experience has been a very unique and rewarding one, and have no regrets in my decision to become a URI 101 Mentor. While it took some adjustment, I loved my class and hope that they had as much fun as I did. I feel that my time spent in class will go a long way in my future endeavors, especially because my goal after graduate study (which I start next year) is to gain a teaching post at the collegiate level. I know that the time spent with this class, in addition my other experiences, will definitely prepare me for my life to come. Go Rams! |
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