Being part of a learning community (LC) made your freshman year. You took the road less traveled and became an LC mentor either to give back or to get a discount on housing. But you know that being an LC Mentor is about so much more: it's about trying your best to get everyone else to do their best. When you first signed up, it was all fun and games but like everything in life, that ends. It also means that at some point you become disenchanted with your infallible spirit means that you stuck through it even when the going got tough. Because you love circles and clearly laid out plans, you can appreciate a step-by-step guide that relates to not only you but to everyone; after all, we're all people with shared experiences. Our shared experience just happens to be the stages of LC Mentorship.

The Pre-Mentor Stage: When you’re just beginning, the world seems to have so much promise and potential.

• All the icebreakers you and your fellow mentors do make you laugh because how can it be so much fun to be so bad at things?
• You do your best to convince every incoming freshman that LC life is actual life. This works really well if you’re a Billiken Buddy or SLU 101 leader.
• You make questionnaires and polls to find out what current LC members like and dislike about the LC so that you can make sure not to make the same mistakes.
• You make all the plans with your co-mentor and can’t wait for the next semester because you’re sure that you’re going to be the best LC ever. Obviously you have to be bffs and talk all summer long.
• You find out who your RAs will be next year and you do your best to become best friends with them.
• All the while, you joke about how nice it is to not be an RA.
• You find all of your old exams and study guides so that you can nicely organize them to help your soon to be mentees.
• When you move in early for orientation and are thrilled to make a mentee-friendly room.
• The day before the freshmen move onto your floor you iron all your LC shirts and plan out your outfit, make cute door decorations, start a draft of your “Welcome to the LC!” email and shake with excitement knowing that you’re basically going on several super intense first dates.

The Welcome Week Stage: It lasts more than a week but it’s the best beginning of a semester ever!

• Who doesn’t love welcome week events?! And the fact that you get to do your favorite events all over again? Awesome has never been so awesome.
• Everyone loves each other! Roommates are the best of friends.
• The future is so exciting and there’s an incredible buzz around how great and amazing this year is going to be.
• Every door is wide open because everyone wants to know each other.
• Although you know your little freshmen are technically adults, you are still super excited to help guide them in their lives. You throw out information and helpful hints like candy, which you also throw out like candy.
• Classes are cool and no where near stressful. Heck, you might even be tempted to not study because of how much you’ve been having.
• Speaking of having things, you have loads of dinners and lunches with your residents because you want to be friends with all of them.

The College Stage: When it no longer feels like summer camp.

• You’ve realized that you actually have to do work. Maybe it was a pop quiz or you have a paper due next week but suddenly school actually seems to start.
• Homesickness (and maybe even an actual cold) start to run rampant through the LC and you begin to think that this isn’t as fun as you thought it would be.
• Everyone begins to freak out over classes and grades.
• The natural split of the floor begins: cliques form and everyone begins to pair off in the ever-concerning “floorcest” (floor-incest). You don’t understand why it can’t all be as great as it was not too long ago.

Their Betrayal Stage: You’re not the RA but you’re also not a freshman.

• It’s not that the residents don’t like or trust you, they just start to distant themselves.
• Thankfully you’re not the RA so you don’t have to worry about fixing any drama but you also realize that it’s not the best idea to encourage the LC members to complain to you about their roommates.
• Despite your constant warnings that college isn’t as easy as high school, the residents aren’t too worried about grades until the first exam so you and your co ask each other if you did the same.
• When grades come back, there’s a lot of emotions running high because, well- failure.
• Suddenly people wonder why you didn’t prepare them for the exam well enough despite the fact that you did your best. Besides, it’s not your grade that’s in jeopardy.
• Fewer and fewer people show up to your events, even if they’ve been promised food.
• Because you’re not the RA, you don’t have much authority, which means that you’re not a leader. However you’re not a freshman so you’re stuck in this weird middle ground that feels a little weird.

The Everything Will Be Fine Stage: Tensions are high so you have to be cool!

• Repeat after me: Support, support, support.
• Hugs, affirmations, candy and support make the world go round.
• Papers and exams are all over the place so everyone is upset and on edge. If you were ever concerned about roommates becoming murderers, it’s now.
• Unfortunately for you, you also have school to worry about. You do your best to smile through the pain but if you haven’t created good boundaries by now, you’ll have residents coming in at three am on Tuesday morning.

The Distrust and Dislike Stage: You tried, that’s what counts! Right?

• Literally no one shows up to your events. Even if you beg. Even if you provide food. Even if you literally drag people there.
• You start to feel frustrated over how unappreciated and underutilized you are. People just don’t understand how hard it is to send exciting emails.
• You’ve put a read receipt on your emails because you want to know if they are flat out ignoring you or if you’ve gone crazy and haven’t actually sent a single email.
• You keep going and do your job but it’s the end of the semester (or year) and you’re a bit exhausted.
• If you’re a sarcastic person, the sass and sarcasm just increase to a terrifying point. If you’re a happy and friendly person, you’ve become so emotionally drained that you might become a sarcastic person.
• You have absolutely no idea why you took this job. It’s hardly a job- you don’t really get paid anything.
• You start to wish you were an RA so that at least you’d get a paycheck for this.
• Chances are that at this point, you’re completely overlooked because everyone wanted to be an RA and not an LC mentor because RAs get paid better.
• You’re also now supposed to try to recruit the next round of LC mentors but you can’t figure out how to sell the position.
• If you’re on the unfortunate side, you’ll probably hear your LC members complain about you.
• You’re also so excited to keep hearing about the awesome new residence halls being built. #sarcasm

The End is Near Stage: Break is on its way!

• Despite all the frustration about finals and life, you realize that the end is near. You’re not entirely sure if you’re happy or sad about this.
• You start to wonder how you can spin the experience to look good on a resume; after all, not a lot of schools have LCs or LC mentors so chances are good that future employers have never heard of it either
• You look forward to the freedom of next year when you don’t have to help people ever again… unless you decided to become an RA.
• No matter what happens though, you’ll always love the LC and remember all the good times you had when you could break dorm rules with your residents because you weren’t an RA. Mattress surfing ftw.

Much like the stages of grief, your emotions are unique and might not have gone in this exact order, but let's be honest: they happened. And there's no need to be ashamed of it! You made a difference in someone's freshman year and that's what it's all about!