“Would I make a good Mentor or Near Peer?”
If you can answer YES to these questions, you are a perfect candidate to become a Beyond Salesian Mentor or Near Peer. Let’s have a conversation. (this would be a link to the inquire form)
I am a good listener.
Mentors and Near Peers act as a “sounding board” for students to share their ideas, academic and career aspirations and the challenges they are facing.
I have a strong desire to have a positive impact on the lives of others.
Mentors and Near Peers have an innate ability to motivate themselves and others for the betterment of society.
I have had experience helping a student successfully navigate college life.
Many of our Mentors have previously helped family members (their own children, siblings, nieces & nephews) or friends by providing advice on college life. Though past experience is helpful for you to be a Mentor, it is not a pre-requisite. Put simply, a Mentor brings different life experiences (career and job experiences) that will benefit our Salesian scholar.
I am willing to share my skills, knowledge and experiences.
Mentor and Near Peers provide guidance and advice to students when making decisions on the best course of action to take in various situations often based on their own experience and knowledge.
A Near Peer will initially focus on providing our Salesian scholar with someone who can respond to questions about daily college life.
We envision the (older) Mentor providing our Salesian scholar with someone who can respond to questions concerning college life that aren’t necessarily about campus life, class schedules, dormitory or college activities that might be best directed to their near peer who has more recent college experience.
The Mentor has job experience and has successfully navigated the process of choosing a career path and capitalizing on their abilities. In short, the Mentor has experience post-school that will provide perspective to our Scholar. Also, the Mentor will help guide our Scholar to, hopefully, avoid some common pitfalls of making the transition to post-high school life. Mentor can focus on questions about housing, ramifications of choice of fields of study post-college, potential career path, introductions to their friends and colleagues (their “network”).
I am able to form trusted and meaningful relationships.
Mentors and Near Peers have a desire to respectfully learn about the “whole” student with empathy and a willingness to invest their time to get to know the student in order to provide honest and direct feedback.
A Near Peer will guide our Beyond Salesian scholar through a college process that they themselves recently went through and possibly be able to teach them “skills” that they recently learned that will benefit our Scholar. A Near Peer has a wide variety of majors, backgrounds, and extracurricular interests, but share a common goal of easing the anxiety of our Beyond Salesian scholar through the beginning of their college pursuit starting with the college application process. They have recent knowledge of the task at hand, an ability to empathize with their Beyond Salesian Scholar and give relevant insight, and the wherewithal to not do the student’s work for them.
A Near Peer may provide invaluable insight to our Beyond Salesian Scholar into the universities that they attend or recently attended. A Near Peer may help our Scholar correctly complete their financial aid forms and/or scholarship applications.
A Near Peer’s insight is not limited to just the programs at their university, but to other facets of student life. Things such as organizations on campus, student traditions for their homecoming football game, etc., are unique to each school and help give it a distinct personality. A Near Peer’s collective knowledge can’t be replicated through online research and campus tours.
The proximity in age between the Beyond Salesian Scholar and their Near Peer will likely make the former more comfortable about opening up and sharing their personal experiences. Beyond the insight a Near Peer can provide is their ability to empathize with their student. There is no replacement for experiencing the anxiety, confusion, and uncertainty of applying to college firsthand. This ability to empathize is especially true when these unnerving feelings were a recent reality and not a distant memory.
