As a peer mentor for the College of Liberal Art, my main role was to help students from one section of the PSY 200 course, Introduction to Psychology Major, with their concerns on different aspects of their undergraduate careers. There should not be any educational requirements to be successful in this internship. However, the fact that I am a junior and have completed most of the required courses for the graduation requirement helped me relate to my mentees' struggles on coursework. It indeed required a lot of soft skills like organization and time management. With a dream to have my own private practice, the experience of being a peer mentor prepared me to develop the skills thaat I need, such as active listening and providing positive feedback in the conversation to make it flow. Furthermore, I was sure that therapy was the route that I wanted to take because I thought helping my mentees through conversations was an effective way to problem-solve together, and it gave me a sense of accomplishment. The difference between a therapist and a peer mentor should be that the peer mentors are not trained to give any advice to the mentees for improving their situations. Peer mentors are like a support system. They provide a guide for others to figure out their solutions and let mentees know that they will be there for mentees. I do wish that I could, in the future, help clients with the knowledge that I gained from my education through therapy.
If you are interested in being a peer mentor for the long term, it will help you a lot with your communication skill and being a better team player. For those of you who are starting new, the one piece of advice that I would give to you is to be assertive with your mentees about your time. You need to set boundaries and let them respect your time too.
I couldn't agree with you more, I think boundaries are an important skill to develop to be successful in any area of life. Good job this semester!
Hi Yuhan! I have also been a PSY 200 peer mentor this last semester. I think you are right in saying that as a junior or senior in this position, it is easier for you to give advice as you have already had experience with some of their questions. As a peer mentor, you do need a lot of organizational skills. I feel like this experience has made me both more organized and more confident in my networking skills. I think these skills can be transferrable to helping people in other lines of work as well. I think what you said about setting boundaries and respecting your own time is a great lesson learned from this experience. Thank you for sharing about your experience!