What I took away from the VU

When looking at my VU experience I would say all around it was an important experience. The tour as well as the Q & A with Dean Ted Pratt opened my eyes to new ways to enhance my experience with my mentee.

How does the VU tour incorporate with mentoring?
When looking at my VU tour what I took from it was an opportunity to educate myself on something that I may later use as a mentor. When thinking about my experience I often think of coming in as a freshman really confused about how to get around in the not only the VU, but also campus in general. I had the feeling that "I wish someone would show me around this place because I'm just lost." Though little interaction is made, mentoring takes place simply because an individual took time to help me better understand an issue that I face. As the Dean said, "mentoring comes in many ways and you'll never know how a little interaction may help an individual take the next step to success."

With this experience along with the current tour I can now provide the guidance to other individual that I failed to receive. Within mentoring this tour was useful due to the fact that I now have a better feeling of my surrounding, allowing me to pass my knowledge on to others. It is a big way to find commonalities with experiences that you have faced in your past, that other individuals currently are facing. You now have another opportunity to educate someone on something he or she may not know.

How Dean Ted Pratt enhanced my perspective on mentoring...
With the Q & A with the dean there was a lot of important facts provided regarding mentoring. A few being mentors come in all shapes and sizes, mentoring is transitional (mentor--> mentee and mentee-->mentor), and the language of the listener. From these many factors I feel that the most important is the term "language of the listener." With the constant struggle to interact with our mentees I feel this term applies to us all. Language of the listen is described as
taking yourself and adapting to your environment. An example of this can be seen through Dean Ted Pratt's experience. During work with the WWU admission office Ted job was to recruit students to come to WWU. When recruiting some of the environments that he went into were low income areas, Indian reservations, and anywhere else where there was an opportunity to plant a seed of college in students. When going into these environments he dealt with multiple perspectives, cultures, and experiences which forced him to change hats in order to be more relatable to the consumers. By putting his mission into their language it allowed him to the get students, parents, and others to feel more conformable and relax, knowing that he knows their experience and where they come from.

When finishing the tour and Q & A with Dean Ted Pratt I would say I received an abundant amount of information that I can use when mentoring. I came out of this experience more educated about the VU as well as ways to better myself as a mentor.