Personal Growth
By Emily Wang
As the only person from a different school, I felt like a complete outlier.
Hi, my name is Emily. I am currently the only mentor coach from PupilPrep that is not from the Bronx High School of Science. PupilPrep is a student run tutoring organization with the goal of trying to provide equal education to elementary and middle kids. Being a coach means that I act as a bridge between the directors and my group of mentors.
Like most people, my initial intention for joining PupilPrep was for the service hours. A friend of mine from Bronx Science, who had recently signed up herself, enthusiastically referred me to Pupilprep’s Instagram page. She promoted the program by saying how flexible the schedule is. So I agreed, because I had no reason not to. I wanted more volunteer hours to fulfill my school’s requirements and this seemed like a great opportunity at the time.
However my purpose has changed since then. When I got the same mentee as I did for the fall session, I felt a sense of responsibility for “my kids”. I felt proud that I taught well enough to make their parents want to request for me to teach their children again. Not to mention, the bond I built with both the kids and their parents are great too.
After the fall session, Pupilprep came out with the opportunity to become a coach. I had already decided I wanted to continue tutoring my mentees because I had an amazing experience so I decided to apply. I honestly wasn’t confident at all in my application, to say the least, so I was kind of shook when I received a congratulation email. Although I was very happy with my acceptance, I also felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb. Not only because of the difference in school making me feel like I wasn’t unified with the team. This was also my first “real leadership” position, so I was decently nervous about the upcoming challenges.
In the first couple of days after getting assigned my group of mentees, I learned how to use Google Sheets to efficiently organize them. As silly as it sounds, I’ve rarely used Google Sheets in the past, so this was an accomplishment in my book. I also learned how to send out weekly mass emails to remind people to send in their mentor contracts, first emails, and/or hours. The next major task was creating and sending out weekly feedback forms on Typeform. I’ve never used this platform before, so figuring out the format was sort of challenging. This is also my first time writing a personal article so I hope it isn’t too terrible.
That being said, as I’m writing this, it has been almost 8 months since I joined Pupilprep. It has been a really funny journey so far as the team has been really welcoming. One of my favorite moments as a mentor coach was talking to Tiffany. I had bombarded her with questions about numerous things and somehow it ended up with her telling me how the organization started, in addition to the long term goals. I was honestly very inspired to say the least. I was in awe due the amount of passion and dedication there was being put in. The tone of her voice, you could tell she was in it for the long run. This interaction highly motivated me to do my best as well.
