0 - Leverage Free Resources on Your Campus v0
Leverage Free Resources on Your Campus
One-on-one meetings with advisors, professors, alumni mentors, and peer mentors that you respect are extremely powerful and almost always under-utilized. Career, academic, and personal advisors allow you to set up meetings with them. Professors have office hours. Furthermore, the majority of schools have peer mentor programs and/or alumni mentorship programs that are extremely helpful.
Let me put it a different way: If you wanted to get consulting from a professor, receive mentoring from an experienced professional, get tutoring from a peer, or receive support from advisors, you’d normally pay over $100 per hour in the open market. In school, not only are these services free, you can set up as many appointments as you’d like. How amazing is that?! Furthermore, think of a peer mentor and/or alumni mentorship program. Normally, you’d have to somehow find someone who can help you. Then you’d have to get in the door. With a mentorship program, the searching has already been done and the door is open!
Perhaps, even more amazing, the advisors we’ve met at the schools we’ve spoken at almost always say their services are under-utilized by students! When people talk about the college experience, they often talk about classes, extra-curricular activities, and dorm life. Rarely do they talk about this incredible resource of mentorship that most schools provide.
- Find the Right Ones. Every advisor, peer, peer mentor, alumnus, and professor you come across will not necessarily be a match made in heaven. Maybe you don’t have a rapport or maybe you don’t have similar backgrounds. Whatever the reason, keep on looking. Here are some techniques for finding the right people:
- Go to your school’s bookstore to see if there is a section with books written by professors at your school. Purchase the books that interest you and then approach the professors during office hours.
- Read your school’s newspaper and alumni magazine to look for interesting people.
- Look for individuals who’ve won awards that you’d like to win.
- See if any office in your school has an alumni or peer mentor program. If there is one, then build a relationship with the mentorship program coordinator so that he/she knows a lot about you and can match you with the best person.
- If you’re in a dorm, refer to your RA.
- Look up profiles on your school website or on the websites of the professors you’d like to meet. If they’ve published articles in journals, read those articles before approaching them.
- Visit the alumni office to see if they have a database that you can gain access to. If you aren’t allowed to access it as an undergraduate, then see if you can meet one alumnus who trusts you enough to give you access.
- Search the Internet for individuals with the background you’re looking for, and include the name of your school in the search query.
- At the beginning of the semester, sit in on all the classes that you’re interested in. After the first few classes, you’ll get an idea of whether or not you want to take the whole course. If you don’t want to, you can simply drop the class and save yourself a lot of grief.
- Sometimes, a professor is only teaching graduate courses, or you can’t take that particular class because you don’t have the proper pre-requisites. Another option you may want to consider is sitting in on the class during the semester and doing the readings if you have time.
- Build your brand/reputation so that the right people can find you. One of the best ways to do this is by pursuing your dreams/passions and creating results. Within the context of a college this could mean:
- Winning awards
- Developing a marketing system (i.e., online profiles, newsletter, blog, website, etc.)
- Winning a business plan competition or an entrepreneur award
- Winning any competition on campus
- Having an article written about you in the school’s newsletters, newspapers, and magazines that go to prospective, current, and past students
- Starting a club or getting involved on the executive board of a club
- Getting elected to student government or council
- Contributing to campus media (newspaper, TV, radio, etc.)
- Becoming a member of the honors program
If you build a reputation in an area outside your dream, then you may receive resources that bring you closer to what you don’t really want. If you don’t create results and/or marketing systems, then people may have trouble finding you.
- Build a Relationship. The last way you want to think about any resource is, “This service is a result of my tuition payments. Therefore, I’m entitled.” Although this may be true on some level, it is ultimately more beneficial for you to build a relationship from the ground up. This means that you should always:
- Send thank you notes expressing your appreciation and explaining how their advice has helped you.
- Respect the other person’s time by coming early and being prepared.
- Take the time to get to know the individual personally so you get a better idea of how the person can help you and how you can help the person in return.
- Give first. This may be easier to do with peers and peer mentors, but I’ve found that authentically giving to somebody is a very powerful way to build a foundation of trust and rapport. It will also set you apart from others, maybe even to the point where they start to tell others. I find that this principle is even more powerful when you go out of your way to help someone. At the very least, I think a good practice is to say, “Let me know if there is any way I can ever help you!”
- Ask for Resources. Advisors, peer mentors, and professors are often gateways to more resources, such as awards, scholarships, others who are like-minded, and special courses/programs. If you’re on their good side, you will gain access to these resources first, you will get an endorsement/letter of recommendation, and you may even be able to get some strings pulled for you in times of need. Furthermore, professors have contacts with professors at other schools, which might help you if you’re interested in going to graduate school. A best practice that a mentor once told me is to ask for two introductions at the end of every informational interview.
- Learn People’s Schedules. Every school has an academic calendar with predictable up-time and down-time. While career advisors might be most busy in the spring when students are looking for a job, academic advisors might be most busy near the end of the semester when students are picking classes for the next term. Learn the schedules of the people you will be working with, and try to work with them when they’re more available. In fact, summer may be the best time!