Mentor/Mentee Retreat: Mentee Edition

Location: Camp Timbers, West Branch, MI

Date: September 30th- October 1st, 2017

Purpose: This retreat is for all of the Sophomores(Mentors) and Freshman(Mentees) in LAS. All of the 100 mentors and mentees spend the night in the cabins in the middle of the woods for a weekend of fun, bonding, and challenging ourselves and each other with no service and only limited wifi.

Bright and early Saturday morning everyone met in the lobby of Barnes Hall and then loaded onto the three buses that would take us to our destination. Two hours later we were pulling into Camp Timbers. We first got to unload and settle into our cabins before we started the fun.

Saturday we were split up into the groups who we would travel with from all of the different activities around camp. All of the activities were challenge by choice, but when you get 100 leadership kids together, we are almost always up for a challenge. Our first activity was zip-lining. We then had other group building and problem solving activities with our mentors and groups. Saturday night there was a bonfire where we got to roast marshmallows, sing around the fire, and hang out with our best pals.

Unfortunately, Sadie had to leave the second day of the retreat so Ellen Wegener adopted me for the day. All of Sunday I hung out with Ellen and her mentee Paige Strunk. We did the high ropes course and got a lot more down time to talk and hang out with everyone else. I was very upset that Sadie wouldn’t be there for the Sunday but as the day started, it was already clear that not only did I have Sadie as a mentor, all of the sophomores are my mentor. Everyone made me feel just as included as I would have felt if Sadie was there.

My favorite part of retreat was to be able to connect with the people in my cohort and above who I had not talked to a lot before. I had gotten into a routine of just talking to the people I knew the most and not connecting as much with the other people in my cohort. I now feel more connected to everyone in my cohort and all of the Mentors and I feel even luckier to be at CMU and in LAS.