A new kind of experience.

As part of my role in the History Committee and as a Mentor manager, I take part in a Leicester award scheme. Below is the reflective blog I have using to evaluate the scheme. Helping with the workshop was something I had not done before and difficult as it involved taking a leadership role amongst my age group and class mates. - however, it was an extremely valuable experience towards a professional role as I learnt how to conduct myself appropriately and gradually build confidence within my role. It is always interesting to gain experience outside of law as it often holds qualities which can be useful within it at the same time as providing perspective.

If you are interested in seeing any more of the posts, or thinking about setting up a similar scheme see www.ullamentor-manager.blogspot.com.


The History Society, of which I am Treasurer have set up a pilot scheme which involve second and third years mentoring first years. The aim of this scheme is to integrate years and provide support to first years who may be struggling to settle into university. We have collaborated with not only our university academic department but also the university careers service. After multiple meetings, Leicester University Careers agreed to support our scheme by collaborating their Mentoring Award with us, which is a recognised Leicester Employability Award. From this, our members who take part in the scheme benefit from increased awareness and development of employability skills alongside receiving an award which appears on their degree transcript, making theme more attractive to employers.

This mentor scheme has now been running since October. We have had a high number of members enroll on the course and the mentors have been extremely effective with mentor and mentee interaction.

Today, this scheme, was my 'do something that scares you everyday'. A top up mentor training session was organised, of which me and a fellow committee member were asked to help run. This required organising an Icebreaker, monitoring and supporting the exercises in the workshop and acting as a judge on a panel marking presentations in an assessment center interview st. - Most of the students attending this workshop were my peers, students I take classes with. This was EXTREMELY DAUNTING.

Whilst I have certainly not been swayed away from a profession in Law, acting in a teaching role was extremely valuable experience.

My only solution to the days task was - to go for it. I ended up really enjoying myself.

Tasks throughout the workshop

1. Organise the Icebreaker.
   This was the first task of the workshop. We had only a vague idea of how to carry it out, so it was a bit of a pilot test. We needed to get the attendees warmed up and chatting with eachother. Therefore, the suggested Icebreaker was to tell 2 lies and 1 truth, whilst the rest of the group had to guess which was the truth. - This worked well. Although, it took a little bit of prompting the students got to know each other and were provided with the opportunity to try each others acting and detective skills. It certainly worked well as a bonding session.
2. Integrate and provide support to the groups whilst carrying out workshop excercises. By moving between each group and asking for an update on how they were doing, every student was always very responsive and positive. It was a great opportunity not only to offer advice on their projects but also to find out how they felt about the scheme. The workshop or some other type of facility should certainly be used in the future to collect feedback and opinions of participants, which can then be fed back into the scheme and improved on.
3. Judge the presentations. This was aimed to be carried out in a style that would be found in an assessment center as part of a job application. For me, this was the hardest part, as I was critiquing people who were of my own age and in my classes. However, it was all carried out professionally and appropriately so therefore became a non-issue. Again, it was really interesting to see students ideas on improvement which could be made within student life at the university and how they would implement this. I learnt a positive skill on how to provide constructive criticism. This also helped to improve my leadership skills by building my confidence and helping me to find the right balance between professionalism and remaining approachable.

Word count: 613