In middle school, we’d often have to write essays in Hindi, one of the most widely spoken languages in my country. While I was confident in getting around my city using our very specific dialect and style of speaking and vocabulary, I’d often struggle to meet the high academic standards of ‘shudh’ (pure) written Hindi. In a desperate attempt to get feedback, I sat down with my teacher at the time to understand what I could be doing better; she suggested the same three-body essay everyone else recommends but asked me to focus more on the introduction. She then nonchalantly gave me an example of a sentence that could be used for an essay on the unit we were learning that month; what was meant to be a way to help me pass sixth-grade Hindi became a way of life for me.
She told me “मानव एक सामाजिक प्राणी है,” which, loosely translated, means ‘humans are social beings’; we have evolved to rely on each other and be part of communities. Finding my home away from home was an integral part of the college process for me. The support I received, mostly through luck, helped me situate myself 9,000 miles away.
While I am sure this hot streak of finding communities is bound to run its course soon, I was fortunate enough to have a group of upper-level students looking out for me as soon as I landed in Baltimore. These were friends from my high school back home that also attended Hopkins, and through fun-filled shenanigans, I was able to get closer to them and their friends. In the same student-year, I was able to find even more folks through my clubs and extracurriculars, who all joined an intricate network of friends looking out for me, answering my incessant questions and encouraging me to try new things. When this entire class graduated in May of 2024, I realized just how much their mentorship meant to me.
Everyone is on their own journey the minute they come to university, with their own heads full of dreams and goals, so there’s no one tried-and-tested method of doing anything. However, there are many opportunities (to the tune of me losing count) for one to seek mentorship in whatever field they’d like!
Here’s a list of resources I am a part of that first-years (and beyond) can access daily at Hopkins:
- First-Year Mentors (FYMs): From the moment you arrive on campus for Orientation, your first point of contact will be your FYM. Your FYM is not just an Orientation leader but also a resource you can tap into throughout your first semester. We’ve been trained in understanding how to access resources, have difficult conversations, and help you find your place on campus. I still keep in touch with mentees from my 2023 cohort!
Favorite FYM Moment: Spray painting the Blue Jay Statue with my FYM 2024 group in what was an ongoing spray paint war!
- Peer-Led Tutoring (PILOT): For most of the introductory-level classes at Hopkins, the Office of Academic Advising has numerous PILOT leaders that help facilitate extra tutoring during the week. Not only has PILOT helped me through some tricky courses, but being a leader has also helped me fulfill my lifelong dream of being a teacher! I work with students in Elements of Microeconomics/Macroeconomics and have had some of my best moments at Hopkins when teaching PILOT.
Favorite PILOT moment: So many! Pretty much teaching the entirety of a chapter on loanable funds in one session on my birthday made me feel like it was destiny! Another was when my old students came together during finals week last spring to just chat after their microeconomics exam.
- Writing Center: A free service available to all undergraduates and graduate students, the Writing Center is a help room where you can bring any piece of writing at any stage to get a helpful pair of eyes on it. I love the Center as a place to just chat about improving writing!
Favorite Writing Center moment: My first-ever session as a newly trained tutor was with a graduate student working on his submission of a computer science paper to a massively important journal. I felt out of my depth on that project, given that I’m used to working on humanities and social science assignments. Now, a year in, it’s almost second nature to get such papers, and I adore reading something new!
I mentor to give back to my community. It’s also a way to honor the time my friends have spent guiding me (sometimes as far as convincing me to pursue a PhD) and support Hopkins and its students. I am so sure you will find mentors in the most unexpected places—it may be student organizations, fraternities/sororities, your program of study, or even just someone you run into in the library. I look at Hopkins as a community that wants to learn and is excited to do it together! It really is a core value to pass on knowledge.
