How to Get your Mentees to Respond

First let’s discover what NOT to do:

1. Don’t be creepy
2. Stalking your mentees – i.e. hiding in bushes, using binoculars, sending them emails 5x a day
3. Only emailing
4. Only using smoke signals
5. Figure they don’t need you if they never respond.

 Ask yourself, why are these students not responding to your attempts at contact? Would what you’re doing work on you when you first started at YU? Seriously, give yourself a few minutes to think back.

When you don’t know someone on facebook and they ask for a friend request, is that creepy? It could be, and in many situations it is. Do yourself a favor and don’t ask for a friend request without sending a message with it, explaining who you are.

Stalking your mentees, via email or facebook will lead you back to being creepy. It’s just not a good idea and will turn the person away from building a meaningful relationship with you.

Only emailing is a terrible idea. This puts an intermediary between you and the person you’re trying to connect with. They can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or joking or serious. There’s no tone to emails, you can’t put up on subtleties just from reading. Also, it’s really easy to ignore or block emails. It’s also really easy to lose emails because of all the sstuds we all get. And we’ve been taught not to open emails from people we don’t know because of potential viruses – this could be why no one is responding to your emails.

Additionally, when you email a whole list of people, that email can end up in the spam folder – never to be read. It’s important to send individual emails – otherwise it doesn’t really seem like you want to form a relationship with each person individually. They have less of incentive to respond to a mass email because they’re just a name on a list and maybe someone else will respond.

Only using smoke signals is problematic. First of all it’s probably against the rules – unless you’re using smoke from the candles of your menorah. Secondly, who knows how to read smoke signals – I don’t – chances are your mentees don’t either. Although this is meant to be a joke, you can carry this message and replace smoke signals with signals in general. I don’t necessarily know what type of signal you’re trying to put across, and there may be tons of other signals going on at the same time. Sometimes it’s better to just be direct.
For example, you want to have a movie night and actually want people to show up. You could send out an email saying you want to do this and ask if people are interested. And they may respond yes or no, but that email is very vague, which makes it harder for someone to respond appropriately. If instead you were to email them and say let’s watch a specific movie (and say the name of the movie), which date is better for you Monday at 7 or Thursday at 7 – it makes it much much easier to respond.

The biggest mistake a Peer Mentor can make is to figure your group of mentees doesn’t “need you” because they never respond. I have spoken to many people about their experiences from their Peer Mentor, and I’ve heard that FTOCs do appreciate that you email them. They appreciate the Happy Chanukah emails, the postcards, the good luck on midterms emails or notes – even though they don’t respond. So don’t stop!

Also, keep in mind that the way you may be trying to connect is faulty – if what you’re doing doesn’t work – try something else. Remember connecting with people is person-specific; don’t try to form a relationship the same way with everyone.

At the end of the day, we cannot force people to respond to you – I may have tricked you with the title. But there are things that you can do to change. Try changing the way you reach out to them. Try changing the types of events you have - find out what they, as individuals, are interested in. Be more direct in your emails – be nice but get to the point – they can’t read between the lines. Make a time to meet up with each face-to-face and maybe call them to figure out a time to do this.

Be inventive – remember you’re busy and so are they. But that’s ok, sometimes a text or an email right before a final wishing you good luck can really make your day.