Hixson Peer Mentor Blog #5 - 

    First off, sorry about being a little slow on the blog post. I had a death in the family this week that kept me away from home for a few days. Moving on, this week we had a discussion over chapter 4 in our "Students Helping Students" book. The topic this week was over interpersonal communication skills. 

    The chapter was mainly about distinguishing when it is appropriate to give advice and when it is necessary to engage in an interpersonal dialogue. This chapter is important because we, as peer mentors, will have to be able to realize whether advice or interpersonal communication is needed. As mentioned by the book, advice giving is easy. As upperclassmen, a lot of the things the 2012 Hixsons may ask us about  in class next year may be simple things or simple questions which we can readily answer off of our own prior experiences. These types of questions will allow us to provide our insights and past dealings and translate them into advice. What to do for a certain class or where to go for this or that service will be things we can easily offer sound advice for. I'm not expecting any difficulties with advice giving.

    What needs to be focused on, and to be prepared for, is more difficult. Not every aspect of our interactions next semester will be advice giving. To truly connect with our classes next fall we will be necessitated to engage in something more difficult - interpersonal dialogue. Past mentors can articulate the need to actually listen and talk and interact in a more meaningful way. Problems will arise and as peer mentors, we should expect our students to want to talk to us about difficulties they are going through - difficulties which do not need advice but something more. We can be considered successful peer mentor educators if we can offer an outlet or a vent or some semblance of trustworthy figure who can be utilized to solve the unforeseen challenges the transition to college will assuredly create.