How to become a mentor
How I did it: I have always wanted to become a mentor to a child because I wanted to make a difference in a child's life. By sheer coincidence, doing community service was a requirement in the Psychology of Women class I was taking. One of the programs was called BLAST (better learning after school today) and they work with at risk kids in after-school programs. I signed up with them. They required that you take a TB test so that you don't infect the kids, and also a background check. I also had to attend a 4 hour training and orientation program. I was placed at Lincoln Elementary and I was assigned to a fifth grader; a 10 year old girl. She was awesome. I mentored her every Friday from the end of September until now. The program ended 3 days ago and I miss her already. We used to hang out and color pictures, play boardgames. We talked about the future and about life in general. This was for my Psychology for Women class and I had to link the stuff I was learning from that class to my experience there; which I did. We had a lot of fun together and we both didn't want our time together to end. But alas, it had to. We are not allowed to keep in touch with our mentees; which sucks, but it's for safety reasons for the child. I hope she does well in life... I know she will. I should be graduating with my B.A. in Psychology in May and I think I am actually going to sign up again this summer and hopefully I can be her mentor again. I hope I made a lasting impression on her; as I know she has on me!
