Laura Tomás Bueno
3rd-year student of Hispanic Studies

"To be a mentor is to accompany others on the great journey they are embarking on, to be able to guide them in this new life and, above all, on a personal level, to rediscover the University with each mentee, because each person discovers something new".

Jezabel Molina Calvo
2nd-year student of English Studies

“It has been a very enriching experience that has allowed me to create new bonds and to grow as a person. The mentees value the time and effort you put into helping them, and it is very satisfying to think that you will be a part of their memories from their first year at university.”

Lorenzo Carretero Villaplana
2nd-year student of Hispanic Studies

“Mentoring has been a very satisfying experience for me. I have learned a lot of new things about my faculty, as well as its inner workings. The most enriching factor has been to be able to help my fellow first-year students in their first steps in the university life and this new and very special stage of their lives.”

Paz García Parreño
2nd-year student of Classical Philology

“It has been an enriching experience on a personal level because I have been able to see how my mentee has followed my advice, have achieved great results and have avoided making the same mistakes that I made back then. But without a doubt, the best thing I got from being a mentor was making a friend. The passion for the classical world has managed to join two strangers, and Mario went from being my mentee to being my friend, my ἑταῖρος”

“Mentoring, besides all the knowledge and the skills it brings, has helped me lose my fear of public speaking and has also given me the opportunity to be able to meet people from other degrees who have become friends and I am taking into my personal life. It is an experience worth living”

Monserrat Carrión Conde
2nd-year student of Catalan Philology

“Being a mentor means responsibility and commitment towards your mentees; it means to dive into their world, learn and help them in anything they might need, to walk with them at the beginning of their new path as university students and, in our case, as future Catalan philologists.”

“My experience as an incoming student mentor has been very positive. It's a position and you must work at it, but it's a lot of fun. Both parties are rewarded: The incoming students are grateful to have peers who help them solve their doubts and transmit security and confidence when arriving in a new country and at a new university. In my case, I feel proud and happy to know that I am helping people who need it. We would all like to have that help if we were studying abroad. I would do it all over again.”

“It can’t be easy to be an Erasmus student these days, so our role as mentors goes beyond facilitating their integration in Valencia. To be a mentor is to be a friend and an advisor, to connect people with common interests during a pandemic. All in all, it means to resume the Erasmus experience again”.

“In my case, I was also an Erasmus student abroad. Now, as a mentor for the incoming students, I am pleased to be the guide that I wished I had had during my stay. This experience also gives me the opportunity to make the most of the UV resources that I know and discover new ones to also help others, which is very gratifying.”

"Having experienced what it is like to arrive in a new city and what it means to adapt to university life was what led me to want to accompany the incoming students in this process. It is a very rewarding experience to be able to help them and above all to make them feel that they are not alone, because beyond the tasks that we carry out as mentors, it is always noticeable that the students are very grateful to have a peer-to-peer support in their integration process".

“I decided to train as a mentor for incoming students just after coming back from Erasmus. The university where I had been studying had assigned us, without consulting us, a local student to guide us through our stay there. It is reassuring to know that you have someone to turn to if you have any issues with the language, housing or anything else. He helped me a lot, and that’s why I decided to join the Entreiguals Programme at the Universitat de València. To help students arriving in a new city. And I discovered that being a mentor is an enriching experience. Not only does the mentee learn from the mentor, it’s also the other way round. It helps you get to know the city again, speak another language, discover another culture…”

“It was curiosity that led me to join the Entreiguals Programme, and it’s to curiosity that I owe my thanks for this rewarding adventure, as well as to the people who make it possible and those I have helped along the way. Being a mentor involves work, but it is absolutely worth it, not only to practice the language, but also to help the Erasmus students, to make them see that they’re not on their own, someone understands and guides them. I find it impossible to explain in words the satisfaction that comes with being their lighthouse in the middle of a storm, learning and meeting new people as equals and even creating a friendship. However, I am sure that I will repeat this experience, because we would all like to have that help that does not go unnoticed and that takes hardly any time of your life.”