Peer Facilitating

Beginning this semester, I was offered the opportunity to be a peer facilitator for the freshman college success course MLTI-1019, Success in the Liberal Arts. As a part of this role, my duties consisted of a variety of tasks. First and foremost, I had to attend both the seminar (lecture) portion and my own discussion portion of the class each week. During the seminar portion, I took attendance, helped in the lecture by facilitating conversation, and aided in the activities my instructor partner planned out. During discussion, I carried out my lesson plan that I had planned out in previous weeks--this brings me to another duty: lesson planning. This was definitely an obstacle I had to overcome; I don't consider myself a conventionally creative person, so coming up with activities to fill spots on lesson plans was difficult for me because I had to come up with fun ways to get the message of my lesson across. This is definitely an area of growth for me still, but I most definitely have more perspective on it now. I also met with, worked with, and built a professional relationship with my instructor partner, Erin Alanson. She was a wonderful mentor, and I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know her and her style of teaching throughout the semester. She was both receptive to feedback and eager to better me as a facilitator. Perhaps my favorite part of being a peer facilitator, however, was the mentoring aspect of it. No matter how quiet my students were during class, when I was able to meet with them one-on-one and ask them how they were doing and how the transition to college was, they were open, honest, and kind. I feel like I connected with each on on a personal level when I was able to talk with them. This also brought a source of insecurity for me, however; I am a MedSci major, while the majority of my students were geology and geography students. I felt as though I had nothing to offer them; no advice on classes, jobs, or career outlook. However, I learned that they didn't necessarily need all of that from me; most of what they reached out to me about was advice about being a new college student. I also got to learn a lot about what they wanted to do throughout undergrad and beyond when we met one-on-one. This is what impacted me most: seeing what the students were passionate about, and being able to converse with them and get to know them on a more personal level. It was an experience that changed the way I look at my ability to be a leader, and one that I've enjoyed so much that I'll be returning to the role in the Spring of 2022!