Building a community one question ball toss at a time!

“I am struck by how sharing our weakness and difficulties is more nourishing to others than sharing our qualities and successes.” 
― Jean Vanier, Community And Growth

I am happy to say that I think I will be able to remember everyone's name after the two rounds of question ball this week! In all seriousness though, I think that activity is a fantastic way to get to know each other on a more personal level and I certainly have every intention of using it next fall!

Starting class by announcing our strengths and weaknesses really helped me get my head in the game. Since watching the Fish! video last week, I have been thinking more about how I consistently struggle to be present in many of my classes. Something as simple as a glance at my to-do list can send me into a mental flurry of ideas and distractions. My new goal is to mentally check myself every time I start a class, an activity, or even a simple conversation with a friend to make sure I am fully present!

Be honest everybody, how excited are you for MBTI results this week?! I am pumped. I remember getting my results as a freshman and being blown away that a test could describe me so well, it was literally mind boggling. I think the MBTI is a fantastic test for freshman to take as it can really help them identify things about their learning styles and emotions that can be hard to identify or describe to others. MBTI results will be a nice tool to have to help connect with students and understand how certain situations make them feel. 

I was required to take a similar personality test last semester in one of my journalism classes and the professor went over the results with us. She said something about how the introverts in our class were going to have a tougher time in any journalism career since they are often very quiet. I know that introverts generally are quieter people, but her more or less dismissing those students seemed very rude to me. Introverts are often the people who do magnificent work without much notice, and as an extrovert that amazes me. As a peer mentor, my goal is to make sure that Hixson scholars next fall don't feel like their personality limits their potential and not to let anyone tell them what they can't do. 

Sorry no cute kitten video this week, but hopefully you all get what I'm saying anyway! (:

Beginning the journey: What is a 'peer educator' anyway?

"Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together." 
-Vincent Van Gogh 

After reading the first two chapters of Students Helping Students, my initial reaction was that I had no idea there would be so much vocabulary involved in mentoring! It brought me to a good realization though: there are a lot of specifics when it comes to being a leader. Being a peer educator has a much wider definition than what I had previously assumed and I now recognize many people in my own life who have served such a role without me even being aware of it.

The process of maturation was something that seemed really weird to read about. I think that as students we have a tendency to go through our day to day lives assuming we've all faced many of the same trials and tribulations, the same triumphs and tragedies. And to a certain extent, that assumption holds true. What we often fail to recognize however is that we all react to those situations in different ways and that they have infinitely many different effects on our views about ourselves and our lives. 

I never really gave much thought to how different processes of maturation would make a huge difference in how peer educator should approach any given situation. Sure, we all face some pretty standard challenges when we begin our adventures at Iowa State, but how students react to those challenges is different in each individual case. I'm really interested to learn in upcoming weeks how to assess those situations and understand students on a personal level. I now recognize that's the only way to truly be able to successfully guide them on a positive path. 

Hopefully this cute kitten video will drive my point home. Just like Pepper, we all face obstacles in unique ways. Some of us will take charge and tackle our challenges immediately and effectively, but others require some reflective analysis and the guidance of peers to take that first step. As peer mentors in training, we are responsible for showing students the way and providing constructive routes for them to follow, even if that means just climbing up a few stairs!