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- LSA Mentorship Program
- Mentorship Resources
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- For Mentors: Preparing for your Conversation
- Inclusive Mentoring
- Job Scams & Fraudulent Offers
- Mentorship Accessibility Guide
- Reframing Career Pivots
- The First Meeting
- Supporting Students Navigating Burnout and Stress
- Giving Opportunities
A Guide For Mentors On Grace and Building Confidence | For LSA Alums
Supporting Students
Managing a rigorous academic schedule is often just one piece of a much larger puzzle for undergraduate students. Students are frequently balancing part-time jobs, family responsibilities, financial pressures, and the constant psychological weight of planning for an uncertain future.
Because of this, your mentee may occasionally arrive at a meeting feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, or not quite acting like their “best self.” As a mentor, your role is not to act as a counselor, but rather to be a grounded and steadying presence who helps them regain perspective and confidence.
Recognize the Reality: The Multi-Priority Student
It’s easy to assume a lack of motivation when a student falls behind or seems disengaged. In reality, it’s usually a sign that they have reached their capacity.
How you can help:
Keep perspective: Remember that career planning is competing with midterms, rent payments, family duties, and basic exhaustion.
Lower the stakes: If a student hasn’t completed an action item you agreed on last time, resist the urge to react with disappointment. Instead, treat it as neutral data: “It looks like you had a lot on your plate this month. Let’s look at what got in the way so we can adjust.”
Lead With Grace: Normalize the Struggle
High-achieving students (“leaders and best!”) often feel immense pressure to appear infallible. When they hit a wall, they may feel like they’re failing. You can dismantle this by normalizing the reality that professional and academic life involves cycles of stress.
How you can help:
Share your own experiences: Mentors who share a time they felt burnt out or overwhelmed give students permission to be human.
Shift from perfection to resilience: Remind them that a single rough week or a rejected application doesn’t define their trajectory.
Provide Tactical Tools to Regain Control
Even small tasks can feel like mountains when students are overwhelmed. Help them break the paralysis by scaling down their focus.
How you can help:
Use the “One Thing” Rule: If their task list is a mile long, help them choose just one low-stakes, but high-impact, action item for the next two weeks.
Manage Scope: Help them separate what is urgent from what can wait. Sometimes students need permission to drop a commitment.
Celebrate Micro-Wins: Acknowledge small victories. If they simply showed up to the meeting while exhausted, acknowledge their commitment: “I really appreciate you making the time to work on your professional development today, especially knowing how busy your schedule has been.”
Know Your Boundaries: When to Refer
You are a vital sounding board, but you do not need to assume a role outside of a mentor. If a student is experiencing chronic burnout, severe anxiety, or a crisis that goes beyond career mentorship, your best tool is a warm handoff to Hub staff.
Listen without trying to “fix” everything: Sometimes a student just needs to be heard and validated without immediate advice.
Connect them to campus support: Share resources directing them to professional campus networks when things get heavy. For example, “I’m always here to support your career path, but I also want to make sure you have the right people supporting your well-being. Have you considered connecting with the Dean of Students to get some extra help?”
Quick Mentor Reminders
Grace over productivity: A meeting where you simply listen and help a student breathe is often more valuable than reviewing a cover letter together.
Confidence is built through safety: Students gain confidence when they realize they can show up imperfectly to a professional relationship and still be respected, valued, and supported.
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