Orientation Week Aka THE FINAL WEEK

So I knew that once last week started, it would go by fast, but little did I know it would that fast.

Seriously.

I've spent the last week both working in Admissions and helping out with our first-year orientation. It has been a lot of fun and it's been great to see familiar faces (aka students I've toured) and meeting more of our incoming class. They are great and have a ton of energy which I hope lasts the rest of the year.

The week (August 19) began with Writing Center Orientation. Since I didn't help with our competition in the spring because I was in NYC, I was looking forward to getting to know the new people we hired. We made our yearly trip to Xavier's, the pizza place on First Ave, only about a five minute walk from Coe. The pizza was delicious, per usual, and I liked interacting and getting to know our newbies. I had to work in Admissions on the second day of orientation (Tuesday), but visited them and sat in on a panel during my lunch break.

The rest of the incoming class moved in on Tuesday night and orientation "officially" began on Wednesday.

The rest of my week looked like this like: worked in Admissions during the day (so my normal eight hours), come back to my apartment, take a quick breather, and then volunteer my time with the first-year orientation. I got to sit in on our events in Dows and help out with the annual dragon boat races.

My favorite part of orientation was definitely during the weekend. On Saturday, I was in charge of loading up the buses with our first-year to head out to Palo Beach. Max, the orientation student coordinator, gave me a megaphone to use and it was quite helpful. While waiting for these buses, I did meet a pretty incredible Coe alum from the 1960s. He was a student when President McCabe led Coe (he's one incredible man and did great things for Coe) and also had Ben Peterson (an amazing professor who the science building is named after). Just another reason I love being a Kohawk.

Anyways, once all the students were loaded on the buses, it was off to Palo and the dragon boats. I spent the day in the sun and we were blessed with great weather.

Sunday was the last day of orientation and overall, pretty low-key for our first-years. I had another pretty cool job; I drove 15 passenger vans to Target so first-years could pick up those final items they needed before the first day of classes. Once again, I loved getting to know the new students and I am now extremely comfortable driving large vans.

For me, orientation week is not only a great opportunity to meet the new Kohawks, but also to reflect back on my orientation week three years ago and be able to give back.  I hope the students I met had a positive and fun week and knowing I could have been a part of their experience is very rewarding.