When I was in high school, we had to do 60 hours of mandatory community service to graduate. For about 20 of those hours, I chose to do freshman mentoring my senior year.. We met with the kids once a month, in their history class, in groups of 6 or 7 (at least– they were supposed to be groups of 6 or 7, but I was one of only about 2 people who consistently showed up, so it turned into us leading the entire class), and talked with them/played really lame games, etc.

It was actually a really interesting experience, way more so than I thought it would be. I didn’t connect very well with the black kids in my group, which I felt really bad about, and I unconsciously favored the kids who were siblings of my friends/people I knew, and talked to them more. I “adopted” a freshman into my group, who subsequently hit on me when we took the same bus one day. I developed less personal relationships than I had hoped, but still managed to have one of my kids (my best guy friend’s little sister) look up to me, which made me feel pretty good. I was really upset with the laxness of the other mentors in my class, and with the lead mentors for not giving us stuff to do that didn’t waste our (and their) time.

However, I think this experience will help me in the service learning for this class. I deliberately chose the Rotary club, not only because I went to Leschi and Washington, as I’m betting a lot of them do, and because I also grew up underprivileged, but to push myself into figuring out how to go against all of my history classes and society and interact properly with black kids. Hopefully I will develop some long term relationships with these kids, and will once again be a mentor.