Week 14: April 21 (2 of 2)

My super stressful yet eventful week has come to a close, and another (probably even more so on both levels) is coming up starting tomorrow!

This week in 311, we discussed peer mentors in higher learning. Brooke and Tanner lead the discussion; although they did a great job, I thought that it was strange to have that topic at the end and not at the beginning of "Students Helping Students." Also, it was a differently-paced chapter. But, just as Brooke and Tanner correctly mentioned, it was nice to just kind of review all the topics we have discussed this semester (which is what the chapter sort of did in my opinion).

We also discussed social intelligence with our article that we read for Wednesday's class. We learned that the seven characteristics of social intelligence are: empathy, attunement, organizational awareness, influence, developing others, inspiration, and teamwork. For our blogs, we were to give 2 characteristics that we feel we excel in, and one trait that we struggle with or would like to work on. The two traits I chose that I think I excel in are inspiration and attunement; I chose inspiration because I'm generally a positive and optimistic person and I enjoy cheering others up or boosting morale, and I chose attunement because I believe that I am a good listener and I am capable of attentively listening to others' needs. The trait that I probably struggle with most out of the 7 is organizational awareness. With 100 students in the freshman Hixson Seminar, it's going to be challenging trying to combat 100 different personalities and learning styles, and trying to get them to work together to increase their chance of personal and academic success.

I definitely can't wait to see the final product for our digital story-telling project on Wednesday. I hope everyone enjoys it and finds it as funny as we did when we were filming it! I'm also very excited to find out who my co-Hixson peer mentor will be for the fall. No matter who it is, I'm very optimistic that we'll be able to make a positive impact on the 2013 Hixson Scholars and help them become successful Iowa State students and leaders!