Week 1: January 20

I felt so honored to be selected as a 2013 Hixson Peer Mentor last November. Now here I am, in the first week of the spring semester, just starting out on my journey as a Hixson Peer Mentor. I am currently enrolled in University Studies 311A, and took part in my first official course discussion last Wednesday night.

The first thing we did in class (as if I was really surprised) was our Hixson introductions, bringing back of lot of memories from when I was a freshman Hixson Scholar at ISU. "My name is Brady Eischeid, and I am a 2010 Hixson Scholar from Guthrie County, majoring in agricultural education." Yep. Same old, same old. In the future, it will be kind of nice to get back in the habit of saying those introductions; for right now, I'm a little rusty.

I thought the "Fish" video that was shown in class was very thought-provoking and relevant to today's society, but I don't think I enjoyed it overall as much as everyone else seemed to. A lot of the group was cracking up at every little bit of dialogue, but I sure didn't. Maybe I just need to watch it a couple more times to understand it more. However, it did give a lot of good tips on how to make a work environment more meaningful and how to interact with a group of people more successfully. I learned a lot!

I am very much looking forward to the rest of the semester course, and getting to know all of my fellow peer mentors. Perusing the syllabus and skimming the textbook, I can see that we will be covering a lot of interesting topics and gaining a lot of valuable information that will not only make us better peer mentors, but better and more-prepared student leaders. I'm very excited for what this experience will bring me!