What exactly is a a mentor? A mentor is a trusted individual that provides motivation, support, information, and personal experience to a mentee, someone aspiring to grow in a specific area. It is incredibly valuable for people to seek out those who have experienced what they are aspiring attain. For example, a first-year college student would greatly benefit from taking part in the university’s first year orientations, to gain insight as to how to best navigate their freshmen year in college. Even more helpful is for an individual to connect with those who have excelled in areas of their interest. Utilizing Teacher’s Assistants in their courses to ask how to best strategize for the term’s workload, for example. On the flip side, a second-year student-athlete can reach out to the first-year teammates to give them some tips and advice on how to be successful on and off the field in their first year. Mentors have unique experiences and insight to pass along to other to help them become successful in a similar field or area, and are leaders who strive to take their mentees to places, experiences, or successes that they have not yet been.

Who is a mentor? Mentors can be anyone who has the heart or the willingness to give their time to help others develop and grow in areas of life that they have much experience in. A mentor can be a coach, a teacher, a parent, a friend, or a teammate. One specific experience I have is serving as a Success Mentor at a University. I work together with a cohort of awesome scholar athletes who earned an athletic scholarship and were considered by school officials as potentially needing an extra layer of support as they entered their first quarter as a first year or transfer student.

My experiences as a former collegiate student-athlete and professional athlete, the first in my family to attend college, a Masters graduate, and professional are all helpful to aspiring scholar athletes. In addition, I, too, had to navigate similar dynamics that scholar athletes encounter today as they seek to excel academically and athletically. Those I mentor in that role are aiming to balance college life, do well in their sport, and graduate with high grades and a solid degree. As a mentor, I aim to help them succeed by sharing tools that would benefit them as well as give them a glimpse into my personal experiences with the purpose of encouraging them. Over time, trusted relationships were formed and these students succeeded.

There are people who do serve in specific mentoring roles, and I strongly recommend taking advantage and forming a mentorship relationship with those that can bring you to where they are or have been. Often times, mentors won’t have specific titles of being a mentor. Take initiative, reach out to these people! Those who form mentorship relationships are greatly helped in their journey toward their goals.