Mentoring

Mentoring. This is what my purpose seemed to be turning into at BCU. I was intrigued because I thought mentoring was one of my favorite things I do I really enjoy at Northwest. I was thinking of peer advising, SOAR, etc. As it turns out, however, apparently everything I do is “mentoring” at BCU. This includes things like academic mentoring, what we would call tutoring. 

Anyways, Luke Nagle and I were to develop some mentoring principles so that Stuart could use some money to develop mentoring programs for BCU and pretty quickly as in January. It was interesting and exciting to look at developing a new program especially as it was what I love to do. It is at this point, early the second week of my visit, that I found out that I would be coming back to Birmingham to continue to work with the University. The previous week there had been joking discussions and speculations that I should work in Birmingham. All these talks kind of scared me because of the big commitment that it proposed! But there were two reasons that the idea concerned me.

1. I get really scared by changes and I change slowly but I’ve live with the philosophy that you should take opportunities so what scared me about this one was that I knew I would say yes whether I was ready for it or not. 

2. When I came to college I discovered my passion. I loved teaching, but at the heart of things, my passion was helping other people. The biggest joy of my life was helping others and making their life a little bit better. This is why I like tutoring. I named this blog, “Just Smile” because besides being a happy person, I hope my smile makes someone else’s day better. I know that I would still be helping people in Birmingham; it just feels a little bit more indirect.

Nonetheless, I continued worked on the mentoring schemes with Luke with excitement. It’s a different kind of work and I hope I will find it satisfying. It’s definitely exciting to be developing these different programs and having the prospect of coming back for another visit. We met with a couple of other enthusiastic students who were excited to run and help develop mentoring programs. One girl even asked if she would get to go to America! She kind of reminded me of myself although I did not ask to get to go to the UK but rather just enthusiastically participated in any discussion that might involve me going!

I also had several memorable nights this week. Gemma and Paul had me over one evening and Gemma cooked me traditional Greek food. The food was delicious, and it was fun meeting their friends. Paul’s flat was really neat, and I think it would be a lot of fun to live in one of those. Another night I went out with Luke Nagle. We decided to go eat at Urban Pie which was absolutely delicious. You cannot go wrong with a warm pie with a hearty filling, mashed potatoes, and carrots all smothered in delicious gravy! We met his friend, Matt, there. Matt was Luke’s friend that lived on a boat in the canal. They had recently just moved it outside of town. I thought this would be a really crazy way to live for a while! After Urban Pie we went to the Victorian (see previous post) and to our delight there was a pub quiz for only one pound. Now thinking of the cheap price and that Americans know pop culture we thought would dominate (even though I told them that I did not know pop culture). We did not dominate, we lost and achieved the illustrious position of last place. I actually used the fact that I was American as my excuse…I did know two questions though. On Wednesday night, Stuart and Luke took me to the Old Joint stock where once again I indulged into delicious pies! 

Because of all the work and all the people, it is at this point I am getting attached. I may have been there for only two weeks, but these are memories and friendships that were created. There was one point at the Victorian when I realized that I was going to miss this place…a lot.