One of the first things I noticed as a Peer Colleague was the students' willingness to learn. From day one, the freshmen created an open environment for their classroom in order to learn and take part in discussions that would help them be better thinkers, speakers, and writers. The students' motivation helped Dr. Swiencicki and I to facilitate the classroom dynamic and course materials without “reinventing to the wheel” to get the students interested. I remember thinking that it was remarkable for a group of scholars to be able to jump right into such powerful topics of discussion after just meeting one another.

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With no shortage of ideas, concepts, and themes being discussed across the classroom, my next responsibility was to help develop and mentor students through the process of idea creation to writing our ideas in an essay.  After a few weeks, the students needed to write their first college essay, which sounds much scarier than it really is. With the help of Dr. Swiencicki, I was able to guide the class in the right direction and show them the steps to writing a college paper.

 

Teaching others writing processes proved to be a challenge as the standards in college are quite different than those in high school. However, the students began coming to me for help and were able to accept feedback, offer peer critique, and take criticism quite well. The result of intelligent, open-minded and motivated students who are able to take feedback well was a remarkable process to experience as a mentor and point of reference for the students. Through our editing sessions and peer workshops, the class was able to produce essays that met the caliber of college writing expectations and continued to improve throughout the semester.

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Perhaps the most rewarding part of my PC experience was witnessing over the course of the semester  the students in Dr. Swiencicki’s LC grow and develop both as writers and as people. With students like the freshmen I had the opportunity of working with as a Peer Colleague, the future is bright for the Service Scholar Program.

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