Beyond the mentor

Sure, freshmen may feel as if they are in an apprentice role when meeting with upperclassmen. But the best mentor relationships, and those that continue between freshmen and upperclassmen, are when they are not in this apprenticeship role forever. It's when the freshmen and upperclassmen are able to connect on other levels rather than just receiving and giving advice. If a mentoring relationship is going to continue beyond the first meeting, the first few questions, the first few emails, there has to be some kind of other relationship developed in which the two players are "equals". These continuing relationships are the type of mentoring relationships we desire, the types that we get the most out of, and the types that not all freshmen get to experience.

Let's first talk about what all freshmen at U of I DO get to experience. All freshmen have the opportunity to have a mentor, whether it be through their LAS/Eng/Bus 100 Tas, the buddy they are assigned for the freshmen orientation events, their resident advisor(all first semester freshmen are required to live in dorms if they live on campus),etc. The point is, U of I has formed an orientation system that pretty much makes it impossible for you to get by your first week of school without running into an upperclassman that is in a leadership role. Each of the upperclassmen mentioned above are qualified and have obviously learned their way around campus and know how to navigate each of their roles. Each has taken their role because they wanted to teach or help freshmen integrate into the college atmosphere. These type of people fit into our mental model of what a "mentor" is. The TAs, buddies, and advisors will all tell the freshmen to ask them any questions. In the first meeting with these leaders, the freshman will feel like an apprentice and ask any questions that he or she has. The questions will get answered, but from here on out, there may be no further personal communication among the two parties. Or, there may be a few more meetings, but it will always be in a apprentice environment, where the conversation is mostly business with a question-answer flow. The two parties do not communicate outside of the meetings they set up for the older student to help and answer some questions for the younger student. In this type of relationship, there is EXPLICIT mentoring, and most (if not all) students at U of I will receive this type of mentoring. Its efficiency is very dependent upon the mentee's ability to be pro-active in asking questions and setting up meetings.

In the above example, there is no relationship outside of the mentor-mentee one developed, so the mentor has little to no incentive of being the pro active one and setting up hang out sessions or meetings with the mentee. In special cases, the mentor and mentee become more than just that; they develop a sort of mutual relationship, where the mentoring is just intrinsic. The mentoring is something that comes with the relationship, but it is not the reason for the relationship. The hang-out sessions are less forced. It's difficult for these relationships to be formed, because often neither the mentor nor the mentee will make the extra effort to break the sessions out of just advising discussion. The extra effort would take the relationship to a different level, one that is outside of the typical mental model we hold for mentor relationships. Not all students get to experience this type of mentoring because not all students are lucky enough to find an upperclassman that they connect with in different ways. Many students that experience this often find these relationships come from a group outside of what U of I provided them with already(although these type of relationships are also possible with the TA, RA but I think most people find it outside of this). Perhaps this is an RSO, a sports team---some type of group where interests were connected and the same type of people coexist.

As I've mentioned before, in my business fraternity, freshmen pledges have this wonderful opportunity to interact and get advice from fellow business majors who have been through it all before. We've been through the resume creating, job hunt, integrating with school, roommate issues, etc. With the ~100 people in the fraternity, even if a freshman has a very specialized issue, they are likely to be able to connect with someone who has an answer. Because everyone knows each other so well, the pledges can easily ask some of the closest members who would have experience about ____(fill in ANYTHING). Approximately 20 pledges are selected each semester based on their personalities and fit with the fraternity after three stages of interviews. During the pledge semester, each pledge must "interview" (hang out one on one) with 34 different active members. These sessions will last anywhere from one hour to a weekend outing to Chicago (although these are difficult to do since there's only so much time in a semester!) Spending one on one time with 34 members in addition to the time at events really helps to push the development of the relationship. The pledge freshmen have an entire fraternity's knowledge at their disposal---as well as over 100 mentors. Pledges are probably on the 2nd type of mentor relationship that I described with at least 10 of the actives. These people are the ones they connected with the most, the ones that affected them the most, the ones that have pushed beyond just a mentor relationship with questions and answers---but into the type of mentor relationship that will last forever.