April 2007 - Posts
The School of Health and Social Sciences has been in the practice of appointing Student Mentors at undergraduate level for several years now. The role of the mentor is comparatively broad, but at its root it is to give support to fellow students. This might mean -
listening and understanding, offering friendship, support and encouragement, helping with decision making and problem solving, being a role model to new students and making referrals to other professionals within the university
Student mentoring is based on the fact that students most often seek out other students when they are experiencing some frustration, worry or concern. Students want to help each other, yet they often do not know how to do it or what to do.
We’re now considering the possibility of introducing a mentor at postgraduate level for the forthcoming academic year, and we would be interested to hear from any students who might be interested in taking on this role. We’d be particularly interested to hear from students who’ve gone some way through the course, so a Masters student, or someone who’ll be in the second year of the Diploma would be ideal. There is pay attached to this post, but it’s pretty basic – just over £6 per hour.
Undergraduate mentors spend a fair bit of time on campus, interacting with the students they’re mentoring but, though we would want a postgraduate mentor to be on campus some of the time, we’d largely imagine that the support they would offer would be on line. If you’re at all interested in discussing this further, in the first instance please contact Mike Simmons.
One thing to note. The one thing you wouldn’t be doing is counselling the students you mentor, though of course you might well use counselling skills in any interaction you have. It would be no more appropriate for you to counsel them than it would be for one of the engineering mentors to nip round to one of their students’ houses and build them a bridge!
Here's another site you might find worth visiting - the
Psychotherapy and Counselling Arena. It's run by Routledge so it's inevitably a little partisan as far as books are concerned - you're unlikely to find any Sage books being discussed, for example - but there's still some good stuff there. The "resources" tag will give you access to a wide range of blogs, some of which you're bound to find interesting. Just remember that blogs are very much one person's opinion, so can't always be relied on to present you with absolute truth. Except this one, of course!
I don't think anyone would pretend that
YouTube is a source of high quality educational material but there, amongst the odd, the very odd and the extremely odd, you will also find some things relating to counselling. Some of which are also pretty odd. The trick is to do a search for "counselling" with the American spelling - "counseling" - as well as the English. You'll find fragments of
CBT,
Solution Focussed Therapy,
Albert Ellis, Carl Rogers, (and somone pretending to be Carl Rogers, which is certainly odd) to name but a few. If you find something interesting, why not post up the address as a comment to this blog?
Let me see if I can embed the Rogers clip into this page -
[youtube:_UCDhdjO0Zs]
Nothing like French Onion Soup, the herbs and spices in this recipe give it something of a Middle Eastern flavour. This recipe serves two.
1oz Margarine or Butter Qtr tsp Turmeric
8oz Onions Juice of half a Lemon
Half oz Flour 1 tsp Dried Mint
1 Pint Vecon Stock Qtr tsp Cinnamon
S&P Small amount of Grated Cheese
Heat
margarine and gently saute the thinly sliced onions for 15 minutes - letting them brown
but not burn. Add a little water to the flour to make a paste and add
to the onions. Stir for a couple of minutes and then ad stock. Bring to
boil, season with salt and pepper. Add Turmeric and Lemon juice and
simmer for 45 minutes or so. The soup will have reduced down
considerably intensifying the flavour. Adjust seasoning, rub mint to
powder between your hands and add to soup along with the cinamon.
Serve, sprinkled with the grated cheese.
Vecon? It's a vegetable stock - there are plenty of other brands around, but that's the one I tend to use.