P.A.S.S poster and work between work...

As a mentor I try to help not just individual students but the university as a whole if I can. This means if there's a design job of some sort that I could be a part of I'm always up for it. I've worked on logos for the award ceremonies before and this years student wall planner but my latest piece is by far my favourite job.

I was tasked with creating an entertaining poster for the P.A.S.S scheme. P.a.s.s is a student led society where students can meet up with older students and study together, its been very successful. 

Im not sure if mentors would count this as mentoring in some senses but I certainly felt like I wanted to do a good job for the student body and represent the scheme well. That's mentoring to me, looking after the few and the individuals. Lately Im having real trouble time wise as my third year projects have sucked up all my free space so my mentoring work has really suffered. Doing this made me feel I could put something back into the university system.

I made sure to regularly show the P.A.S.S group the designs and progression of the poster taking on-board what they wanted and needed and changing the design accordingly, luckily everyone seemed very pleased with the design.

Little bit of mentor success in this very hectic year!

Toodle pip!

How to be a good mentor 101.

Howdy folks!

Back and off to a running start with mentor training, managed to miss the first few days which is a big shame but popped up for the last two which were great, couple of highpoints that pop to mind.

scotts amazing 'across the room' pig catch, nice.

when my team won the balance board whoo! fastest time out of everyone, go team and nice work queenie who came up with the idea to win, clever clogs.

It was a great time, the stuff on emapathy really stuck with me, really interesting stuff.

It was nice to meet the newbies and have the whole team come together :)

In the summer time...

So, summers over and the return to uni is upon us.

bright eyed bushy tailed freshers will not embark on an age old tradition of being drunk and loud and meet a truck load of new people. Busy time for mentors.

Over summer I've been mentoring from a distance, most of my work has been in helping returning students with housing but there's been the normal relationship problems too and even one student who was having alcohol problems. honestly its been busier than I expected and I personally find it difficult to mentor from a distance, I prefer face to face chats rather than doing things over the net.

I also sent some messages out to people I've spoke to in the past or who I know are having tough summers and just saying hey, hope every things going well, short friendly notes just to remind people Im easy to get hold of when theyr'e back at uni.

whole new year and Im really excited to be back and get stuck in. Freshers is going to be a busy time for all the mentors and I cant wait for the challenge.

post up tales of what goes on as it happens...

  Its important to practise your mentoring on injured extremly cute wildlife. One thing I will say is that sol had some wounds that needed treatment so I took her to saint tiggywinkles (named after its vast infimary for hedgehogs). the hospitol is for wild animals but reliens on donations, I paid for sols treatment but most people don't donate so when I posted up pictures of this bundle of extremly nervous fluff I made sure to post links to the tiggywinkles donation page on their website and mention it on facebook as the pictures drew alot of attention. 

I mention this because the whole scenario reminded me of being a mentor, the rabbit was injured and alot of people said I should just keep her but I took her to the hospitol, I facilitated. I looked at the situation and thought whats best for her not me and that is in my humble opinion exactly what a mentor should do, we facilitate, we help the person with the problem find the best people to help them. The advertising was to help out the helpers, remember other mentors may need a hand :)

 Sol (named after the norse goddes of the sun, which is where sunday comes from, sols-day *ifound her on a sunday*) will not come back to me shell be released back into the area to remain a wild animal.

Well Hi!

I'm the scruffy gentleman, so named because I am generally messy in appearance but make an effort to open doors for people. I'm a firm believer in opening doors for people, I'm glad we got past that, that was important.

Ok, so this is my blog as a mentor, I'm going to use it to document my adventures of being a mentor and hopefully if I find anything valuable along the way (which is inevitable when dealing with people) ill share and hey maybe we can all walk away with something useful, I dunno, that's the plan.

My name is Sam Coleman and I started being a mentor in my second year at Newport university. I became a mentor because a lot of people recommended I should and I felt that I would benefit from the training and advice, I genuinely enjoy helping students, making new students feel less AHHHGHH about everything and you know holding doors open, that sort of thing...

I cant speak for all universities but I like how Newport uni is run, I like the community feeling in our university, I like seeing lots of people from different ethnicities and different countries with different beliefs come together and get along, its not always smooth but when it works its really great and here it works a lot, I became a mentor to be a part of that no matter how small my part is.

If you stick with the blog then I warn you I'm going to be pretty honest about what I see and do but you wont hear any details that are personal in any way up here, no names will be used, Ill just say the problem, how I handled it and what I thought afterwards.

 Before being a mentor I thought this would be about helping students work the library out or just having a coffee with a new student and pointing out some nice places to eat but in my few months on the job I've seen some really tough stuff to deal with, stuff that I really didn't expect, stuff that challenged my own thoughts and ideals (yeah that big!) and going through it with the people I've been through it with has definitely changed me as a person, on what I think and how I deal with people. I like to think for the better :)

Its a bigger job than it looks because mostly it is helping someone work out the library or having a coffee but other times it gets big and your dealing with real people having real big problems and more often than not you're their first port of call. Coming out of it though is the jobs real reward, you make your own rewards out of a job right? its more than a pay check.

I got heavy on you there but its important I start with what I think. I promise more pictures of kittens next time to even it out :)

Toodle pip!