Session 5, here we go!

We are over halfway through! SO SO insane. We are on day zero of session 5, and there are plenty of students to hang out with in the lobby right now. It's kinda funny, when they hang out in the lobby, and we start playing games with them. It's like we have new toys or something, and we tend to act like little kids. For example, we record videos like the one I'll post below here. Also, some strange game, I think it's called Ninja, they guys like to play tends to get a little rowdy. So we make sure to entertain them, and ourselves til room-checks. But I'll make sure to keep this a little more updated over the next session, and keep up with a few good stories to go on here. Goodnight Blake Hall!

Last week's "Training"

We were tricked into believing that we had a full day of Training before Session 1. That was not true.

Session 2

Since no one else has posted, I'll fill in a little bit.

This weekend was wonderful and amazing and restful, which was much needed after Session 1. Saturday night Kolby, Megan, Ellen, Taylor, Justin and I started got a little hyper-active and pulled mattresses downstairs, and had too much fun. There may or may not be a Jurassic Park-like video of Taylor and Kolby attacking people. So entertaining. Eventually we did settle down and watch a movie with a few others that joined us through-out the night. Sunday we had FOAP family day, in which some of our families came to Blake and we showed them what we had been up to for the past few weeks.

Monday came along and WHOA. Session 2. Right back at ya. So session 2 has been interesting. I definitely enjoyed my group a lot, and from my feedback I got, they really enjoyed me too, which makes me feel like I'm doing something right! Yay! Everything went really smoothly, and so I'm eager to see what we can improve even more. We have debriefing in a few minutes, so we will see how long this takes us. To the Iceberg Lounge!

Aye aye aye aye ayyyyeee AGRICULTURE!

-Ella

Session 1!

Warning: This could possibly be the first real sentimental post.

So today was Day one of Session 1. Holy Moly. This is real life. From packing all 515 bag last night, to checking in all of the students within an hour, to performing our PERTA before about 1,000 people, to our individual experiences with our groups and LSU Superheroes. That was all in the span of about 24 hours. SO insane. When I came through orientation about a year ago, I was what I call a "blah" student. I just got the information fed to me, and got out. I knew LSU and I was like, sure, whatever. So today, when I went into my meeting with my Agriculture College students, I was my general peppy self, feeding them the information just as I had been trained to. This information is very vital to the college experience, but I did a little experiment today, just to kinda see what would happen. At the beginning of my evening meeting, I handed each of my students a sticky note. On the sticky note, I told them to write one question, concern, anything that that had to say about coming to college. I originally didn't say the word "fears", but somehow, when asking for them again, I did mention "fears", which I thought nothing of at the time. So after they wrote on the sticky notes, I took them and lined them up on the wall of the room. I didn't read them, and continued on with my presentation and explained the general catalog and Experience LSU. After I finished that, I went over to the wall and began reading their questions. When I originally planned this activity, I expected more "textbook" questions, that I could keep and know to mention to other students, etc. But what I got on these sticky notes was so much more. Some of them read "I'm nervous about getting lost", and "How are college and high school tests different?" and "I'm nervous to change my major" and "I'm scared about living in a dorm." These are all things that there is no page number to tell them to flip to. I realized that none of the sticky notes had an actual question I was expecting, and it was very eye opening. When I went through and read them out-loud, I answered them with a lot of my "cliche responses" and a lot of them with personal experiences. I realized later that those questions that I was answering at the time were THE MOST important questions on these students mind, and the reason why we are here as orientation leaders.

I went back and thought about our slogan this summer, which reads, "LSU SUPERHEROES:Defeating your fears of freshmen year!". So far, it has just been a clever slogan on a poster and our t-shirts. But I realized tonight that we really do have a chance here at orientation to defeat their real fears of college. We may give them plenty of "tools" with the handbooks, but they won't remember those things a month from now. They are going to remember when their leader gave them real life advice that they can use, things we all worried about, and then went through. I had been feeling kinda "blah" all day, because I felt like I was being the "textbook" orientation leader, and that I wasn't really connecting to this group as I had my last few groups, but after reflecting about this experiment, I feel a lot better about what I'm doing, and I really do think that I can have an impact on these students in my group. Tomorrow I am going to ask them again to write some feedback for me on another sticky note, and have them tell me what they thought of the activity. I think for my next session, I'm going to ask them to move their chairs into a circle, or something and have my chance to answer these sticky note questions, but also get other students to discuss them, because I really think they probably got more out of that than anything else.

I'm still am kinda surprised at my little find. I expected orientation to have an effect on my leadership skills, etc, but I wasn't really sure how I was going to be effected by the students, and by what I am doing. I definitely wasn't expecting to see an effect this early on. This is only session 1, so now I'm really really excited about my next session.
But I just got my secret buddy gift, so THANKS SECRET BUDDY! I LOVE IT! And now it's time for some sleep, I've still gotta finish Day 2! Whoa.
-Ella

Papparazzi

Just a few images from Summer Orientation, Decorations, and Painting a giant banner!

Smores and pranks

Dear blog,
Today it rained. A lot. Really, like an entire Great Lake was emptied from the sky. No lies. But thankfully, it did stop long enough for us to practice a campus tour, no soggy orientation leaders here. We did however, drive in the rain to enjoy a team lunch at Counter Culture, which is one of my absolute favorite places, and we filled ourselves with sandwiches and Humphrey or two. YUM. We showed Campus Life office our "LSU Superheroes" activities, and it went really well! Holla to the Activities group (Amy, Kolby, Amanda, Sierra, Meg Wags!!). During dinner, Kolby, Sierra, Chi, and myself took an adventure to Wal-mart to be inspired in what we wanted to eat. So I'm drive, and unfortunately, saw the dreaded blue lights flash behind me. I've never been pulled over, so I was a little freaked out. When the cop asked me to get out of the car and talked to him for a few minutes, come to find out, the reason he had pulled me over was because he said my license plate was expired, which is totally not true, since I got that license plate....last week. All was good, and he let me go without a ticket after I explained to him I had just received the plate. So we continued on our journey to Wal-mart (which by the way, a few of us have gotten in this weird thing about using strange accents, most of which don't make much sense, but it is entertaining), and came back to Blake. But knowing the four of us, we just had to tell our story about being pulled over, and when I say tell our story, I mean make up a ridiculous elaborate story about how Kolby and Chi were handcuffed and Sierra was placed in the back of the police car. We went as far as slapping their wrists, and holding our eyes in front of the air conditioner to make us tear-up. So we came back, and told this insane story, and everyone believed us. SO great. So prank is on all of you guys. Love ya. But now there is a group of us sitting in the kitchen, perfecting our power-points and preparing for Mock-FOAPticials tomorrow, complete with smores and tea (courtesy of Ellen and her amazing stash of tea!). So wish us luck tomorrow, and hope that the sky doesn't fall out again on our way!
Good-night blog,
Ella

Team CC- Cross Country

Tonight, a few of us wanted to go work out but when we finished the UREC was closed so our only option was a night run. We ran down Sorority Row to Dalrymple and back to Highland and then down Highland to Blake. It was a good run and all of us seemed to keep up well. The boys encouraged the girls to run faster and harder and to push ourselves. Thanks for the encouragement guys..

So we made a few plans.. we want to keep running this summer and hopefully by the end, we will be in good shape.

Yay Team OLCC!

Katelyn