Things to remember for next semester...

             It was really nice to have Megan, Brooke and Josh talk about some of their previous experiences with peer mentoring! This advice should really help me to be prepared for some of the situations I wouldn’t have thought about for next semester.

            Probably the most important thing that I learned from this week’s class is that the planning for the week will take a lot longer than I thought! I thought it would take at least a half hour but up to two hours, wow! Hopefully with this knowledge I can make sure to have this time blocked out on Sunday’s of next fall. Another thing I felt was important relating to making lesson plans was to start the plan for the week early so that you and your co-mentor have time to think about different ideas. This will help to reduce the time you have to work on this stuff especially when you have a busy week coming up! The final major thing I learned was that there will be some really awkward situations that we may go through as mentors. Depending on how we handle these situations it can be easily dealt or not so easy…but just make sure to keep it an enjoyable experience!

            One of the things that I am really worried about is the situation of having a student that will not do the blog posts, comments, or come to class. I know that they gave us an example of this however I didn’t feel like I received a strong answer of how to deal with this. To me it seemed like they pretty well had the student just continue to resist and not do the assignments so if anyone has a good idea of how to deal with this situation please let me know!

The final lesson!

Makayla and Nicole had a really fun presentation on Thursday! The game show “Clueless and in College” was super fun and exciting because we had great involvement from both the participants and the audience! Also, talking about good versus bad qualities of a peer mentor helped me to realize that there can be some bad peer mentors so that’s what I don’t want my mentees to have to deal with!

            I really liked talking about the different qualities that we think make up a good peer mentor. As most of us know, to be a good mentor you have to make yourself very available as a mentor. You must be able to put in the time to make your mentees appreciate your help and want to come back for more of your help and support. Some other qualities that we talked about were being able to refer a mentee to the correct person if you are unable to help out. This makes you more trustable to your mentee but also really helps your mentee out more than what you would have.

Now on to the not so good qualities that we talked about…..to start off I would like to talk about Sam’s drunk CA. When you’re in a mentoring position it is really important to remember that you are a role model to many of your students! When you go out and get drunk for a week strait that doesn’t go over well in you mentees eyes. Another good example we had was a mentor who didn’t have encouragement for group participation and activities as well as didn’t have regular meetings. This really discourages your quiet students from getting out and meeting new people but it also makes the group less connected.

After going through last week’s lesson I can’t wait to find out who my co-mentor is and meet my mentees this fall! Great job Makayla and Nicole on finishing out the semester with a fun lesson!

Using Resources

Katie and Shawn presented about the use of different resources on campus and whether they were personal, academic, or career focused, or all three. This presentation really reminded me of how I used resources to help myself through my freshman year as well as different parts of my sophomore year so far. After realizing what different resources I used I decided to choose to write about the last given situation which was the one concerning William wanting to change his major. I chose this situation because it was never a problem for me but seems to be a problem for many students so I should definitely be ready for this problem. To start off I would inform him that many students come to college having no idea what major to go with. To address this problem you must first figure out what area of study you are interested in. I would ask him what his background is and what college he is most interested in: Business, Agriculture, Life Sciences, Design, etc. Once I found this out I would be able to further help him by setting up an appointment with career services to make sure this is a good choice for him. I would tell William that I had never changed my major before and have not had much experience when it comes to knowing about different majors so I am not the best help to solve the problem and that is why I am referring him to the career services building. To me this is a more urgent situation so it should be taken care of quickly. By me attending this meeting with my student I feel as if they will be more prompted to go to the resource again and to build the student’s confidence in the resource. After this referral I would make sure to ask if William thought this resource was helpful or not and then give him time to think about all of the different things that were discussed during the referral. About a week later I would check back in with him to make sure the problem is getting fixed or else I would find another resource to use to fix this problem.

Academic Success

Definitely should have written this before spring break…. but oh well, let’s just see where this goes! So Courtney and Kayla presented during our last class and their topic was academic success as we should all know. Two major points they worked on was external/internal motivation and being an encourager/discourager. Both of these points were great at inspiring and promoting thought about my own academic success and how to promote success in my own mentees.

            External and internal motivations are often hard to see until you actually slow down and think about how you function. I personally am motivated by both depending on what I am dealing with in terms of it being academic success or a club activity. External motivation is my main drive to be successful through academics because I like to study with friends to obtain better results. My friends' external motivation is usually very positive to make me want to study more to continue to be successful academically however I can also use my internal motivation to push myself to study hard for each test I will be facing. When it comes to dealing with club activities that I have been designated to be a chair for or on the committee, I feel as if it is my obligation to get everything done because I have been appointed to this position and been trusted to do my part to make the activity successful.

            Now with the encourager/discourager part, I personally try to do nothing but encourage my friends to be successful whether that is in academics or work. However, I do discourage activities such as drinking and smoking because of the negative impacts these activities will have on your life and the effects it will have on your loved ones. I know that encouragement pushes me to continue to do better so that is why I continue to do this myself.

            I hope that what I learned during this past class period can really help me to make my mentees successful and assist them in figuring out how they are motivated!! I hope you all had a wonderful spring break and see you all later this week!

ISCORE event

            So, I was only able to attend one ISCORE event because I had classes from 8-9:30 and from 11-5. Anyways, the one event I made it to was very interesting and made me think more about how every individual student may be affected by their own different background but should be able to feel at home here at Iowa State University due to our great diversity. The presentation was about how student’s different socio economic status and their social class can affect a student’s ability to attend college as well as feel accepted at the college. They started off by talking about the different human races and how that can affect their chances of attending college. Next they discussed how it is very difficult for the lower economic class families to support their students through higher education. The last part of the presentation was a discussion about various topics and points that individuals in the crowd wanted to talk about. This discussion was pretty interesting especially when some lady from Alabama talked about how they have various programs specifically aimed towards Hispanics or other racial groups to help them continue through college and feel more at home. I know that ISU also has specific programs for these situations; however the discussion brought new ideas to the table to help our different racial groups coming to ISU. The main thing that I got from this presentation was that we as peer mentors must realize that our mentees can come from many different socio economic statuses and social classes but must be able to understand as well as accommodate for these differences.

Leading Groups and Problem Solving!

            I hope everyone enjoyed the intense and close basketball game on Saturday! As you all know Nikki and I presented during our class on Thursday. I thought overall for this being our first time leading a class we did pretty well. I know that I have some things that I personally need to work on and continue to strive to get better at such as speaking louder and more clearly as well as not just going off of the outline for our presentation. Besides those personal things, our topic was about the various aspects of how to lead groups effectively. We started off by going over our introduction followed by the discussion and situational strips we provided. I think our situational strips really helped our fellow peer mentors by providing real situations that we, as peer mentors, may run into throughout our experience as a peer mentor.

            At the retreat Sunday Brooke and Sam presented their presentation about chapter 5 Problem Solving with Individuals from the week we missed class due to the snowy weather. They both had to remind most of us about the different things we read in the chapter because it was such a little while ago! During their discussion they explained the ways to formulate a diagnosis about a problem and the three sources of a problem. These three sources are the gap, the hole, and the obstacle which they explained to us and gave greater insight about. We talked about the different sources and explained how to deal with these different situations. We also talked about ways to problem solve by thinking outside of the box. Some of the really great ideas we came up with to think outside of the box were to think while in the shower and brainstorm together.

            During the retreat we had several ice breaker activities that were all great ideas to use for our own mentoring groups. Although some of the activities, such as Kayla’s, I feel would be better to use that later in your semester with your students to get to know the stuff about them that they may be scared to write down or say out loud. Otherwise I felt like the retreat went great!

Round Two: Social Media Week

           This week was the second time I was required to use some type of social media program through the Hixson program and once again I had to use Twitter for a week. This second experience was a lot of fun compared to the first experience because I somewhat knew what I was doing. I still kind of don’t understand how some parts of Twitter work but still had a great time using it for this past week. During this second experience of using Twitter I got two main ideas from it. The first was that this experience really helped us as a group of peer mentors to become closer and get to know each other. By doing this I think that growing a stronger relationship between us will help us to build strong relationships between our peer mentees and us. I also noticed that everybody is sick and tired of the snow and cold weather which I can definitely agree with!

            I really enjoyed the Angie and Kira’s presentation and activities because they were both very informative and hands on learning! Although the Lego project was frustrating because we were given a role that may not be in our comfort zone or a role we usually like to do, I still really enjoyed the activity because it was different from previous group’s presentations and made us realize that we may have to control ourselves in group situations to complete a job successfully.

            Now for Allie’s presentation about social media, the major things that I took away from her presentation were that “social media is like a tattoo” and “don’t put anything up that you would be embarrassed to see on the front of a newspaper.” Both of these phrases really make sense and greatly explain how to use social media correctly by thinking about whether your tweet or post may negatively represent or affect you or your future. I think that allowing us to tweet during Allie’s presentation was also very funny and enjoyable too!

Using Interpersonal skills versus advice giving

I hope you all had a wonderful Valentine’s Day and got to eat some delicious chocolate and other candy! During this week’s class period Lauren and McKaila presented over chapter 4, “Interpersonal Communication Skills”. I thought Lauren and McKailas’ presentation ran very smoothly and was very helpful in realizing that I should think about the different options a student has before giving them my assistance or advice on something that is troubling them. I know that I am usually an advice giving individual because that is how I feel I can be a better leader for other individuals. For peer mentoring though I must be able to distinguish the difference between when advice giving is more appropriate or when interpersonal communication is the better way to go about a situation. Being able to make this distinction will definitely make me a better peer mentor for my future mentees.

My next thought about Lauren and McKailas’ presentation was the first small, but funny video clip we watched at the very beginning of their presentation. This video showed both advice giving and interpersonal skills being used incorrectly. The advice that was given was not particularly good advice because he basically told his friend to go marry this girl they both know. He also did not use great interpersonal skills by not listening to his friend’s story very intently or caring what his friend’s decisions for the given situation was. I can probably speak for most people by saying that I don’t like to talk just to hear my own voice so if I had a friend who was doing this to me I probably wouldn’t go to them for advice or help with a situation.

Chelsee’s presentation at the end of class helped me to get a better idea of what different terms are used to describe interpersonal skills and advice giving. I never realized that giving advice was simpler and more of a process of steps when compared to using interpersonal skills. I hope that I can get better at both of these skills and be better at realizing when to use one skill over the other during this and next semester!

Josh's Presentation: Week 3

During this week we went over Chapter 3, Enhancing Cultural Proficiencies, in the “Students Helping Students” book. In this chapter there were many different definitions of different words that are commonly misused or misinterpreted. This chapter also talked about cultural differences and how we all come from different backgrounds and must realize this. I personally came from a small school which had little to no cultural diversity and after moving to Iowa State University I had to realize that at Iowa State University there is a much greater amount of cultural diversity.

The different activities Josh had us complete were very interesting to me and kept the audience involved during his presentation. The first activity we were involved in was to pick out the top ten of our best values from a list of at least one hundred different words. My first ten words were ambition, commitment, determination, family orientedness, hard work, leadership, reliability, results-oriented, success, and thoughtfulness. Picking out these ten words was fairly simple for me. Next we were required to narrow this list down to five words which was simple for me. My five chosen words were ambition, commitment, family orientedness, hard work and leadership. Finally we had to narrow our values down to three values and mine were family orientedness, hard work and leadership. This was not as simple as the two previous cuts but I felt as if these three words described my values the best.

For Josh’s next activity we were supposed to connect all of the dots on this piece of paper with four straight lines without lifting your pencil or retracing any lines. I was not able to complete this activity just like most of my fellow peer mentors. This activity was used to make us realize that we may have to think outside of the box for some different situations.

Overall I thought Josh gave a great presentation and used many different styles of teaching during his presentation. I hope that my partner and I will be able to have a great presentation like Josh did!

Diversity Event: Freedom Riders: Documentary and Discussion

I’m just getting this post up because I didn’t have time to work on it while I watched that very intense, amazing and crazy Iowa State men’s basketball game last night! Anyways, I attended the diversity event “Freedom Riders: Documentary and Discussion” last night in the South Ballroom of the Memorial Union. The event lasted a total of about an hour and a half and contained a great video to start the lecture and also contained a good discussion at the end of the lecture. I did not catch the lecturer’s name because I came in a little bit late but he was a historian who was going to have a discussion about the “Freedom Riders” and their journey through the south to test the United States civil rights policies. The ride lasted several weeks and was meant to be a nonviolent experience for these “Freedom Riders”, however this is not how their ride turned out. When the first group reached Alabama they were approached and beaten by a group of white men. After that incident a second group attempted to continue this trip through the south to New Orleans. This trip forced the federal government to enforce its regulations with far greater regulation after further violence was seen. The presenter explained the rest of the video and continued on to a discussion of the video.
I thought this event was pretty repetitive because I had previously learned this information during my high school history course. However, the discussion following the video about the “Freedom Riders” was very helpful to understand different people’s views of how these events have impacted the United States history. We also discussed how these events did not happen that long ago and how they are not as much of a problem in the United States anymore.
A question that I still have is how much of a problem is still seen with people in the United States? I still think that this issue has not been entirely taken out of some peoples past so I would like to know how prevalent this issue still is in the United States.

ISLE and Mid-Year Leadership and peer mentoring sessions

On Friday I was only able to make it to one session because I had class during the other sessions but the one session that I made it too was from ten to ten-fifty. I attended this event where the speaker was Roger Bentley, an engineering career services program coordinator. During his presentation he talked about how to properly write your peer mentoring experience on your resume. To do this properly he told us to use words that explained and described ourselves with certain unique sets of words that make us stand out against other qualifying candidates. Roger said to also make sure to expand on the experience and make sure to include more than just a single line about our entire mentoring experience. He also expressed the importance of explaining your active parts or experiences instead of your past awards and honors. They are still important but should be a minimal part of your resume because they do not explain you very well but explain your past.
On Saturday I made it to sessions two and three. For session two I went to the event in the cardinal room hosted by Kyle Holtman relating to team building. During this event I learned about a couple of different activities that I can do to help build a stronger relationship with my mentees. I can also use these different activities to help me to get to know them better without making it super awkward!
I attended the third session, again in the cardinal room, by Mary Horton who is currently a senior in biology and the former president of the sorority, Kappa Alpha Theta. During Mary’s presentation she discussed the steps of “challenging the process” which include three steps: evaluation, innovation and action. Through these steps I learned that for a new idea to be successful you should make sure to evaluate the process first, make sure it can set into place and then put it into action.


I really thought that these different leadership events helped me to obtain more ideas for building better relationships with my mentees. These events also allowed me to listen to former peer mentors and leader’s ideas and experiences to help me figure out what I can do to make my peer mentoring experience better!

My new MBTI results!

Through the Myers-Briggs personality type indicator program my personality type was registered as being ESFJ, which is very interesting to me. When I first took this personality type indicator program during my freshman year I was registered as an ISFJ. I know that during my freshman year I was very quiet and introverted as the program states. As I met new people here at ISU and gained more leadership skills through the many different activities I was involved in I opened up more to people which makes me realize that I have become more extraverted but not as much as the personality test indicated. That is the only part of this test that I believe to be somewhat incorrect.

Now, for the sensing personality type, I rely greatly on my senses by thinking very realistically, using practical approaches, being a results-oriented individual and continuing great traditions. For my feeling personality, I am a person who heavily relies on other peoples input to situations; I always hope to achieve harmony and also try to takes everyone’s feelings into great consideration on most activities or situation. Finally, for my judging personality, I am a very early starter for many projects and activity’s. This is because I usually stress out when cramming is needed or specific answers are needed without getting allowable time to work on or think about the current situation. I usually like to have extra time to think about the different affects one decision versus another can have on the final project or product of my decision so without allowable time I feel I may make a poor decision that will negatively affect the final project.

I believe that I will become more extraverted and talkative with our group of Hixson peer mentors as we progress further through the semester and into next semester. As of right now I know several of our peer mentors pretty well but I really hope to get to know the rest of you better!

Week 1

First off, everyone’s poems were awesome! We really have a creative and very thoughtful group of mentors! Anyways, our first class has made me realize that there are A LOT of different situations and challenges that we as peer mentors may have to face and must be prepared for! These situations may sometimes make us uncomfortable but that’s what this class is for. It may be uncomfortable or a little scary but overcoming these challenges really makes me want to try harder to get the task completed!  

I know that from the reading my main concern is career and lifestyle changes. When I first came to Iowa State University I had my mind set to have my major set as animal science. I, just like many other animal science students, have had the thought and idea of continuing my education onto veterinarian school but I am very afraid different variables especially the costs. Since I am not very certain of my career path I feel as if I will not be able to answer my mentees concerns with their career paths with full confidence.

Our in class activity was a great opportunity to start to think about the different questions and situations we may have to face when one of our mentees approaches us with a problem or concern. This activity made me realize that there are some questions that I as a peer mentor may not have thought would arise or may not be yet prepared for.

As we progress through this course we will continue to better prepare ourselves for peer mentoring and hopefully be able to answer these questions better. As we learn more through this course we will progressively strengthen and reinforce our leadership skills and professional abilities.

I am so excited to continue to learn more through this course and can’t wait to meet my mentees next semester!

See you all on Thursday!

About Me

Hello my name is Matt Schulte. I grew up on multi-livestock and crop farm in northeast Iowa near Dorchester where we raise calves from birth and finish them out for market. We also raised pigs in an outdoor setting until the fall of 2012 when my dad sold out of this part of his operation. We grow and produce our own alfalfa, corn and oats for our animal’s use and then sell what is excess. I went to a small school in Waukon, IA and have since continued my education at Iowa State University. Through high school I was very involved with different extracurricular activities such as FFA and other agricultural related activities.

I feel like I am at my best when I accomplish something of great difficulty and time consumption while continuing to stay ahead of my other commitments. This helps me to stay busy and continue to know that I have to be productive during my times when I don’t have class.

I enjoy being very active with different activities and meeting new people through these activities. I am currently serving as the executive position of Senior College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) Council Representative for the Block & Bridle club I am involved with. This executive position has given me the opportunity to continue to meet new people in our club while also having the chance to meet more people throughout the CALS during our council meetings. I am also currently on the Iowa State University Collegiate Meats Judging team and really enjoy this! It is a very time consuming activity but it really makes me feel at home because it reminds me of my judging experiences through FFA CDE's.

I enjoy learning about many different things but I especially like learning about agriculture. I have been involved with the agriculture industry since I was very young and have continued to be involved through high school as well as into college. I am currently in a couple upper level courses in animal science and am enjoying these greatly. I am very interested in animal reproduction as well as physiology and hope to continue to be involved in courses related to these areas and hopefully aid a professor in some research about this.

My main goal as a peer mentor is to help the 2014 Hixson students successful complete the transition to Iowa State with as little stress and confusion as possible while also having someone there to answer any possible questions and encourage them to get involved on campus in a club or community activity. I know moving to Iowa State can be difficult because of all of the new people you meet and the sudden changes that happen so I want to help make this transition easier for the new Hixson students. I would like to also gain more personal skills such as being able to lead and teach younger people better.

I feel as if I will be the freshmen students’ and specifically my peer mentees go to person for any questions they have. I want to be able to answer any questions or direct them in the right direction to get their questions answered. I also want to be able to encourage them to be great leaders on campus while maintaining great academic records.


Talk to you all later!
Matt Schulte