Victoria Rodriguez
"My mentor experience through the IE program was amazing. I was matched with a mentor in the exact program that I was applying to at UT and I thought that was the best part. She was able to give me insight into the specific program but also to what life is like as a graduate student. My mentor, Jennifer, is from San Antonio like me and is also from a similar background. This helped when it came to talking about issues of money and how to pay for grad school, as well as her experiences as a woman of color in graduate school.
We started meeting in the fall of 2010, and would meet about every Thursday in the early evening for about an hour or two. We spoke about everything that we planned on talking about and all of the information provided is invaluable to me. She helped me with my application process, with working on my publication for McNair, and now shell help be pick a grad school to go to. I was able to sit in on one of her classes called Motivation and Emotion and see what a graduate class looked and felt like. After visiting with her class I felt confident that I would be able to handle and enjoy graduate school very much.
My experience with Jennifer overall was awesome. I really feel comfortable calling her my friend now. She has been a really great mentor and I hope that we remain friends as I go on to graduate school. She has been a tremendous help and am truly thankful that I was put in contact with her through the IE program. I dont know how I would have made it through the application and selection process without her." --