Aliza’s story
Mentoring was so important for me, especially during a lockdown where you only see the people you already know. You get to connect with someone you’d never speak to outside of school and that’s really important because it forces you out of your comfort zone.
I found it embarrassing to ask to talk to a teacher all the time but it was so easy to talk to my mentor. She could use her experience and her hindsight to help me with my decision making. Mentoring is a once in a lifetime opportunity so I wanted to be as honest as I could. I got some really good advice from it.
My mentor really got me thinking critically. I found it really hard to answer an interview question about my weaknesses and my mentor helped me to identify that I wasn’t great at asking for help. I think I can do everything for myself and a big part of my personality is being independent, but she taught me it’s ok to ask for help and I think that’s really changed me.
I told my mentor everything I possibly wanted to do in my entire life! She did a lot of research for me, demystified NHS bands for me and told me about her personal experience as a neuroscience professor. She also told me uni isn’t the only option, which helped me a lot.
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Mentee stories
Simran’s story
I always wonder whether I’d be thinking or feeling the same about university if there wasn’t a pandemic. I completely lost that in-person interaction and was struggling with the UCAS application because of it. But then, if there hadn’t been the pandemic, I wouldn’t have been able to do the virtual work experience and use the Brightside platform.
