Glad That's Over

Yesterday was the final new student orientation of the summer at IU South Bend. Orientation is one of my major job duties and yesterday we had our largest ever. Over 450 domestic undergraduate students in attendance with an additional 40 international students and 125+ parents and guests. My job? Well, basically coordinating everything from A to Z in regards to orientation. Everything from recruiting and training student mentors, staff and faculty advisors, lunch, all the set-up logistics, rounding up speakers, printed materials, you name it. A lot of work, but always very rewarding. It's exciting to see all these students and parents on campus beginning their college careers.

But I'm still glad this one was over. Being so big, things had the potential to go wrong because I'd never worked with this large of a crowd before. But they didn't, everything went quite smoothly. Rain would have been a disaster but it held off until after we were done (I always tell people I do an anti-rain dance the night before).

Now, it's time to begin planning for next summer, but first I need to get ready to teach my class of 20 students in our freshman seminar. That too I look forward to each fall. Classes begin August 31, so I probably should get rolling on this.