Peer Mentoring: A Classic Solution
By Ryan Carini
Patrick Henry College is offering the Peer Mentoring Service for those students who might need some extra help to get through their classes this year.
The program is designed to help students who are struggling academically at PHC, either as a whole or in specific areas.
“It’s a way students can get help from upperclassmen who know the professors and the academic expectations of PHC,” said David Carver, Resident Director of the men, who is in charge of the program. “The Peer Mentoring Service offers students who know they are going to have trouble in academic a chance to survive.”
Students meet with their mentors once a week for one hour and get counseling on how they can improve in certain areas. The program offers three tracks for students. An overall academic track, a writing track, or a subject specific track.
It can be somewhat humbling, Carver said, to ask for help, but he points to the liberal arts education to show that asking is not a bad thing. “We go to the great authors for help,” Carver said. “It’s a part of the liberal arts tradition for those in a scholastic community to look to others for help,” he added.
The program can be especially helpful for freshmen, a fact that Jeremy Siblerud is taking advantage of. “It can be a link in the chain between the professors and me,” he said. “It is humbling to think I might not be up to it, but I have to get over that at some point.”
Other freshmen are less excited about the program. Freshmen Daniel Broaddus said that although it was good the school was offering help through the program, he believed that getting help through unofficial means was just as good. “Either way,” Broaddus said, “I’m glad that upperclassmen are so willing to help out others. A man stands tallest when he stoops to help his fellow man.”
Although the official deadline for getting a mentor has passed, Carver is willing to work with students who find they need one later on. Interested students should contact Carver for more information.
