mentoring students

Part of my job is mentoring students. I mentor 50 students all first years Ba. It is amazing to see how much is going in on so many lives. Parents are sick or dead, siblings sick or dead. Abuse, trauma. On the other side the more common problems like do I actually want a university degree or are my parents forcing me. Should I join a fraternity? How do I get a room/friends. How do I study as efficient as possible in the time left between my jobs, my friends and my parties? I expected the last part friends/jobs/etc., not the major life trauma things. Well, I expected some, but this year we have quite a bunch who are dealing with a lot of pain and stress. All of these students keep in touch, and come to the one on one talks we organize in order to make the transition from high school to uni as easy as possible. On the one hand I think this mentoring is a good idea, on the other, I never had to and I did not miss it. Plus this faculty has enough students as it is, so it might have something to do with getting better ratings… And part of me thinks the students should grow up at some point, so why keep holding their hands well into Uni? If you can’t handle uni, stop studying there. There are enough Ba and Ma as it is…