Personal Narrative: My Experience As A Student Mentor

My junior year in high school, I became a student mentor in our campus’s peer counseling program. This was an incredibly rewarding experience as I had the opportunity to help freshman students assimilate into our high school dynamic. As a peer mentor, I assisted students with personal problems and mediated issues with teachers in order to maximize their learning experience. I also acted as a role model for my mentees by talking frequently about AP and Honors courses and how to be successful in such programs. I put effort into learning about each individual's interests and goals so that I could expose them to clubs and academic courses that they may appreciate such as the Biomedical Academy or our school’s robotics team.
This experience didn't truly shape my goals in life until our campus suffered an immense tragedy. One of our students, a sophomore, took her own life. It hit both students and faculty hard and for almost a month, our school’s administration did nothing to acknowledge the loss we had all suffered. It was during this time that I faced with several rattled students looking to me for emotional support and guidance. This was certainly not the responsibility to which I had originally agreed, but circumstance had placed me in a foreign leadership role. It was easy to counsel students on which classes to select and how to excel in academics and activities, but …show more content…
Helping others is rewarding and the process came natural to me. Coupled with my love for the biological sciences, this desire to serve others led me to a career goal: being a doctor. Eventually, I would love to become a neuropsychologist in order to help those with traumatic brain injuries overcome psychological deficits. Although this leadership role dealt with neither neuroscience nor psychology, it set me on the path to finding where my true ambitions