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