Graduation Speech : A Mentorship Program

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Recommended: The concept of mentorship

As exciting and useful the college mentorship programs are to the students that need them to gain the proper stepping stones to success. There are unfortunately many colleges that do not have a mentorship program let alone a proper mentorship program in their college. Especially at the University of Southern Mississippi that seems to be lacking a mentorship program for their students. Until you are forced to perform research to discover that there supposedly a mentorship, but it goes under the name academic coaching an sounds far from something that could truly be effective for students that really need a sounds support system. Especially, students that come from far away or grew up in a tough environment where they lacked a proper role model or someone to support them on their higher education journey.

It is your first year as freshmen or as transfer ,and you are welcomed to the University of Southern Mississippi, through a multiple day event, known as Golden Eagle Welcome Week. During this event you are lead around in a random group by selected upperclassmen leaders that are called the GEWW Crew. You form a bond with them for the entirety of the orientation event, but come the last day you barely see them again except at the random events during the semester. They may exchange numbers and social media accounts with their group, but beyond that they have their own lives and own educations in mind. Now where do you turn now when possible role models have left your company. There seemed to be your peers that have their friend groups already, and seemed well prepared for the college adjustment. The thoughts start to sink in how long till I can go home again, how am I going to get through these courses, what could I do to get invo...

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... sometimes new students do not know what to truly explore.
That’s why I propose that the University of Southern Mississippi form a proper peer mentorship program for new and upcoming freshmen and transfers. The idea for the program would be that students interested in being mentored would have to apply a semester prior to their first year of enrollment at the University. This application will be designed to assess the incoming student’s educational interests and personal interests so that way they are paired with a peer mentor either an upperclassmen undergraduate or graduate student that matches their interests. Then come move in day the student will meet up with their mentor, who will get to work mentoring through the act of helping them adjust upfront to living in dorm and how to effectively live in a dorm to insure personal health and educational focus is kept.

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