Relationships

Hi All,

Building relationships with the students is what I would have to say the first step in our mentoring process. This can be really easy with most of the students you will have and be a big challenge with some of the other ones. Of course it is easiest to build a relationship with students that have common interests and situations, especially ones with similar majors because they will come to you asking about classes. Right now I still talk to on a daily basis four of my students, a couple of them because I help them with classes, and the other two because I just built a good friendship with them.

Because of a few situations that I have seen from last year I feel I need to address a few things. First, that it is not okay to have a personal(in a boyfriend/girlfriend sense) with a student while they are part of the seminar class. For my sake I will say this wasn't me but I did see that this creates a ton of problems and extra baggage that is not necessary. Just avoid it. Second, students might happen to ask you to buy alcohol for them if you are of age. This is obviously very wrong, the best way to approach the situation would be to remind them of your position and why you are around.

These situations can make most people very uncomfortable and many people tend to go a little overboard when dealing with such things. My best advice would be to handle it in a way that is discrete and makes sense, try not to blow things out of proportion just because your uncomfortable and your emotions get involved.

By now I'm sure everyone can see that my writing can be a bit sporadic and hard to understand. I do my best and feel that if I just type what I think I don't sensor anything. Let me know if this becomes a problem.


Thanks,
Kris