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GLD Portfolio
SYDNEY PICKETT
KEY INSIGHT 2:
Rediscovering Yourself and Your Impact Through Difficult Conversations
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Before college, I had a hard time opening up to others and I did not have a confidant to go to whenever I just wanted to vent. In society talking about your feelings and other stigmatized topics is generally looked down upon. This is even more prevalent in minority families and in communities where everyone has a reputation to uphold. Belonging to both of those communities, being open about your personal issues was seen as being weak and pretentious because other people have is worse than you. Since this was so looked down upon conversations were not had and issues were not addressed in my childhood. As I grew older and started competitive dance, I built a strong bond with my dance group because we would have moments of vulnerability with each other talking about our lives. I did not realize at the time but being able to vent and have these difficult conversations with my dance friends made it easier to process the trials and tribulations of being a teenager. Going to a college in a different state, I was losing my only safe space where I could process life, go to for advice, and have meaningful conversations. I did not know if people in college were going to be as open and accepting towards me. I knew that I was going to have an easier time transitioning to college life if I found people that I could confide in and open up to. However, I ran into the issue of relearning how to open up to people who I did not grow up with.
I arrived to the University of South Carolina as an incoming freshman and in order to get the feel of the university environment I registered for Pillars for Carolina. Pillars for Carolina is an extended orientation program for first year students before they officially move into college. Beyond the fun activities that they advertise in the brochure, we did a lot of self-reflective and identity activities. With these identity-based activities, you must debrief these activities with difficult discussion that delve into individual’s beliefs and backgrounds as well as talking about heavily stigmatized topics like mental health, sexual orientation, and race.
I think one of the main reasons why this program was so impactful was that this was the first time I saw so many people my age be so open to talk about their life and give space for others to do the same. I was also so amazed how my upperclassmen mentors were able to personally connect with every student in our group, facilitate these conversations sensitive topics and create an open safe space for us. The impact this program had on helping me find my community of people and comfortability to open up to others was something that I wanted to share with others. I decided to apply for Pillars after my freshman year and became an Extended Orientation Mentor, XM, for the next three years.
For my first year being an XM in 2019, I felt comfortable in my role as a mentor through weekly trainings and me just coming off of being a participant the year prior. My week of Pillars 2019, was successful and I feel that I was able to recreate the safe space my mentors created for me, for these new students. In the fall of 2019, I was selected to return to the program. From being an XM the year before, I felt comfortable and confident in my returning role. That confidence was very short lived due to the pandemic that would change the course of my college experience. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted my academics, sociability, confidence, mental health, and plans for how I would continue through this program since it was cancelled. When offered to keep my mentoring position in 2020, I was a little hesitant. I would have to do the week of Pillars as an incoming senior, which means there would be a four-year age gap from me and the new students. Also, due to quarantine at home I lost the majority of my social skills and closed myself off to others. I was worried on how I would be able to facilitate those difficult conversations with students to create that safe space when I lost my ability to open up to others.
Even though I had all of these concerns in mind, I still decided to return to the program but I needed a refresher on how to connect with younger students. Coincidentally, I had to take a class called The Teacher as Manager, EDLP 401, that was for being a peer leader for a first-year seminar class. In this class we learned how to interact with first year students, engage them in thoughtful conversations, and how to properly provide advice to students as upperclassmen.
The class was discussion based, we would talk about our classes and how can students get the most out of the class experience. We would go over what activities the students really liked and self-reflect on how well we thought we were connecting with our class. Although I had to take it for another involvement, most takeaways I took from the class I applied to the week of Pillars. One of the main ways that I used what I learned in EDLP was a lesson we had specifically for learning how to effectively have difficult debriefs in self-reflective activities. In the lesson, we did the “My 30 Values” activity, where the goal is to have students rank the top 30 most important values to them at that point in their life. The difficult part is students have to rank people, items, places, goals, and memories above one another. In the class, we did the activity, debriefed, talked about approaches to execute this activity in class, and gave possible scenarios of students’ reactions. In the artifacts section, I have linked the "My 30 Values" lesson plan and debrief techniques we used in my EDLP class. When doing this activity in my EDLP class, we discussed the importance of setting up ground rules to emphasize that this is a safe space, being patient since this may be the first time a student opens up about their life, and sometimes starting the discussion with talking about your own experience to set the tone of discussion. In Pillars, we do similar self-reflective activities. Having done the “30 Values” activity in class helped me come into the orientation with new ideas on how to approach activity debriefs with students. It also helped me get in the headspace of opening up to others in order to create a safe space. Located in the artifacts section is an excerpt of my Pillars XM Training Binder. This shows a piece of the schedule for a specific day which includes an explanation of a self reflective activity and potential debrief questions to ask students.
Learning how to connect with mentees properly and authentically through meaningful conversations is vital when becoming a mentor. You have to be able to relate and to create a safe space for them to grow. Although I had it my first time around in mentorship, I lost that ability and through learning new methods on how to reach students I learned how to do it again. Even when I thought, I was going to have trouble facilitating debriefs, the self-reflection activities we did during my EDLP class put me back in the shoes of a freshman.
I was able to recall thoughts, feelings, and openness I had during that time and apply it to my wisdom that I now have as a senior. In some ways, I think rediscovering these feelings looking back on my college experience made me more open to talk about my college life, both good and bad. It made me look at how having conversations that may be uncomfortable can lead to people to discovering themselves and finding their people like I did both at home and in college. Although being open and honest is a work in progress, it has helped me develop a rapport with my students as a mentor and has served as a way for me to be comfortable with who I am.
ARTIFACTS
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