At the beginning of every semester there's an opportunity called the buddy program. A buddy is local (or a person just as experienced) who is going to become the main person you turn to when you need some help. They are there for you in any situation like they can care of your health holding you were beer when you have to go to the toilet at the bar. Truly everything.
I signed up for the program in the last semester but due to some malfunction I didn't receive a body until one ESN-er from the Porto trip over its two become one. While this is a nice story, I actually wanted to talk about my mentoring experience from the time I was a buddy for not one, not two but nine people.
I heard about this opportunity at the University of Pecs that you could become a paid mentor if you send them your curriculum vitae and a motivation letter. I didn't get the social scholarship because they required the paper that is not available in Romania and the didn't accept the alternative proof I could offer (I call racism) so I could really use some extra money. This was my main reason.
When we started out, I was stealing the United States so I couldn't be there to greet my nine fellows but they sent every each of them an email saying sorry and welcoming them in the beautiful city of Pecs.
Now a weird thing happened. I didn't know my responsibilities. I had to look after these students, I had to keep in touch with them and send the monthly report. No here comes the BUT. Some of them did not answer. How could I keep in touch with them if I couldn't even get an initial reaction?
To be completely honest, I think about my mentoring career as something that could improve a lot because that semester was kind of a disaster.
I tried to finally meet them in person when I got back but I didn't experience the expected enthusiasm. I made the Facebook chat, put everyone in I could find and then initiated a hangout.
A few of us (by which I mean me and three boys) ended up having a brunch on the beautiful Sunday noon at my favorite brunch spot called Reggeli. I answered some questions, we had a nice conversation, they even invited me to the zoo after but I couldn't go because I had some work to do for school. I even got to meet another boy from my little group who was way too hungover to show up at 1 p.m. but got well enough by then to join the others for the hike. Basically this was the end of my interactive mentoring experience but I couldn't just write in the monthly reports that I never made them again.
I wasn't exactly lying. I did answer all the questions they had, I tried to be arranging meetings and I asked about their wellbeing every 3 weeks but they were passive about it. After all, being in their little Erasmus friend group must have been more fun .
I do hope that in the next semester I will have the chance to work with the group more participating. Maybe this time having the Erasmus experience will help.
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