Get back to where you once belonged
Well, it's starting again. Everyone is trying to adapt, or re-adapt, to life in grad school. Juggling school and work schedules with homework and family and friends. The nervousness of finding an internship or full-time job. All of the things that make being a grad student so much fun!!
Coming back as a second year student, however, I have a bit of a different focus. I intend to spend more time this year enjoying Columbus and Fisher. I spent so much time last year concerned with grades, internships, and other parts of the grad school life that I didn't get to enjoy some of the social parts of student life. This year, I am determined to make more connections with The Cohort, and get to know some of the first year students as well.
Last year, it seemed my class connected really well overall. While there will naturally be groups of students who have more in common and thus form stronger bonds, everyone has always been really supportive of each other. Many of us hope to be able to pass that on to the next class as we move through this year.
With that in mind, many of my classmates and I were happy to volunteer our time to take part in the orientation events to bring in the next class of students.
Summit Vision/ARC Team Building
The first event that we were able to take part in was a team building activity at the ARC. For this event, students are put into teams and are instructed to complete a number of tasks within a certain amount of time. After each activity, they had to pass on the instructions to the next team, and that team must complete the same task going strictly on the instructions of the first group. These activities were meant to get the students working in groups, obviously, but also begin thinking about how the activities apply to different aspects of leadership, teamwork, and communication. It also gave us second year volunteers and chance to interact with some of them, and talk about our experiences and how they can me linked to the activities the students were taking part in.
This also was the first event that I was able to see some of my classmates whom I hadn't spoken with over the summer. In particular, I got to spend some time talking with fellow bloggers Garren Carbal and Eric Dosch. I had the pleasure of interning with Eric in the same company this past summer, but my interactions with Garren outside the classroom have been limited. He is without a doubt one of the funniest people in the program, and let's be honest, his new found skinniness is pretty impressive.
Varsity Club Social
Immediately following the team building, all of the incoming first year students and a good portion of the second year students all gathered at the Varsity Club for some food and socializing. It was a great opportunity for us to get to know each other and to see The Cohort again. Besides the lack of a few of my favorite classmates, i.e. Wes Lin, it was a great night. I also got a chance to see some of my second year classmates talking the first years and was happy to see how open they were with them, and really seemed to want to pass along as much helpful information as they could. Orientation is a rough couple of days for the first year students, considering all of the information that they have to take in. It was good to see my class offering help.
