Wrap Up

Let's knock the dust off the old blog, eh? There were a few times during Orientation where I started to write some posts (let's be honest, only Saturdays and Sundays) but they were all abandoned when I found I was rambling and not coming to a specific point. As I've stated before, I don't want this to be an outlet for my day to day happenings and that was what most of those posts wounded up being about. But sadly Orientation is now over, and I'd like to spend a bit of time truly reflecting on what a fantastic experience it was.

I don't want to speak in cliches and give the typical ambassador answer of "this was/will be the best summer of my/your life" because honestly it's a really tough comparison with studying abroad last year. They are two completely separate entities - I love Clemson to death, but being able to prance around Italy and live in a city last summer? That was pretty freaking cool. In terms of people, however, this summer blows last summer out of the water. I came out of Italy with a one fairly close friend, a few more people to say hey to on campus, and a few as well that I dread having to see to be completely honest - which is awkward cause we were nearly all Marketing majors and I have had/will have to still see them in classes. Granted Orientation saw it's fair share of drama (never a dull day at Orientation 2012!) and tempers boiled over at times, but there is no one I dislike coming out of the summer and to my knowledge nobody who has any issues with me individually. (If you do, step up and say something! :P Haha) There are OAs that I never really got to bond with and just know in passing, but there are no hard feelings at all. I've also made a lot of close friends that will (hopefully!) last beyond Orientation. What's even greater is that these are friends that I probably would have never run into without this experience, and even if I had I may not have given them a second thought or ever even spoke to them. Crazy to think about how our choices can send our lives spiraling in wild different paths.

Whereas the OAs were not nearly as cliquey as Italy, it was still kinda cliquey. I'm not going to lie, there were a  few times where I felt like I really did not belong, like there was no one I could turn to, that I did not fit into the other friend groups. Rooming with Sid really helped with this - I consider Sid to be my best friend from Orientation, and I am really glad he was my Lever roommate. We shared many laughs, ridiculously outlandish discussions, and bounced our sarcasm off each other. Sid really hates groups, so whenever I was frustrated with the cliquey feel to everything, it was nice to be able to just hang with Sid and do our own thing. As I've written about before, I tend to bounce around from friend circle to friend circle without ever fully being engulfed in one. While this wasn't a huge issue of exclusivity, I could pick out a couple different divisions among the OA team - clique is a strong word to use for this situation, it was more just who tended to spend free time with one another. By the end of the summer, I found myself hanging more and more with the sorority girls - who would have thought, me of all people?! I have this uncanny habit in college, I've found, of hanging out with a group of girls I don't really fit in with and making great friendships out of it - I can count four other instances through my college experience where that seems to hold true. But I am glad to have broadened my horizons and to have had a great time with some awesome people - special shout outs to Sarah, Adair, Erika, Lindsey and Sophie on that note! You are all amazing individuals and I am glad to have gotten to hang out and know you better this summer! I also have to give a big shout out to one of the presenters at SROW from the University of Tennessee - unfortunately, I do not remember his name. He was an introvert, however, and in a presentation on the topic he gave a great piece of advice for an introvert to "survive" the summer of Orientation. Embrace who you are, but do not let the stereotypes define you - for a team to work best, the extroverts need to take hold of some of the best qualities of introverts and the introverts need to learn to step into more of an extroverted role. I definitely embraced this right away in terms of working Orientation, but when I applied it to bonding with the OA staff as well, it did wonders for me. I wish I could thank the giver of this advice, but for now I'll suffice it to hum Rocky Top to myself and track down Wes in the fall and maybe have him pass it along, after doing an internship with the Tennessee Orientation Leaders.

I must admit, small groups was probably the biggest challenge I thought I would face this summer when working with students. When I went through Orientation and Convocation, the two things I disliked the most were the ice breaker games and the pointless small talk. As an Ambassador, I would now be the one forcing the incoming students to participate in those exact things. With the helpful advice of our Team Leaders, especially Caleb, I thankfully was prepared for small groups well during training. Without Caleb's advice, I don't know how I would have reacted to my initial meeting of my first small group on Day 1 of Orientation way back when. Literally the most blank and awkward faces you could imagine on 18 people at the same time - that's when the damnedest thing happened...after playing an ice breaker, they actually brightened up and became talkative! Crazy those things actually work, although ironically not for someone like me - at my Orientation, I don't think I said two words during small group time outside of the typical "Name, Hometown, Major, Fun Fact" formula. Well I wish I would have been able to lend more general wise words from an old Senior, I quickly learned after that first small group that people really do not want to hear you talk at them - especially after sitting in Brooks Center and being bored to death by the introductions that always put us behind schedule session after session. I knew going in that I was not going to be an in your face extroverted ambassador who tried to pump small group pride artificially - hell, I didn't even have a cheer until Session 3 and depending on my group's interactiveness in the morning, I sometimes didn't even mention it. But I did step out of my comfort zone to try to lead the new students along in discussions when no one wanted to talk, tried to make connections when I could with people rather than just letting everyone go around in a circle so they could introduce themselves and then forget everything anyone else said. I'm not saying this was the best way to do things, because that's absurd to think that there is a right and a wrong way to do things when dealing with so many different personalities. I'm just glad that I was able to stay true to myself and still come up with a system that worked for a scenario I definitely would not have been able to handle my freshmen year, all with minimal adjustments being made since Day 1.

 And speaking of Day 1, as much as everyone tended to complain about it - and yes it was exhausting standing around after not getting much sleep, especially as the weekend loomed just a few hours ahead - I feel like I really came into my own and excelled on Day 2 of our Orientation Sessions. They get a bad rap among the OAs because as the students, parents and guests go into their different interest sessions and academic advising, we are standing on our feet in the same spot and answering the same questions on about 6 hours sleep if we were lucky, from 7:30 to around 2 without lunch. Yeah, it was sometimes tough keeping alert on Day 2, and I'll be the first to admit I would succumb to short breaks of wandering over to a friend to have a quick chat and laugh before returning to my post, but there was never more of a true customer service feel than being able to help people out on that dreaded second day. Whether it was as simply as pointing a confused Engineer towards P&A for the 10th time that morning, clearing up a scheduling question for a parent, or running around the chaotic registration room and easing the troubled mind of a stressed out student or being able to return from your pleading to the masters of the registrar and inform them that yes, you were an awesome person and yes, you did get them into that class that was closed and hearing the thanks that were associated with all those scenarios truly made it all worth it. The ability to help people like that is why I wanted to become an Ambassador in the first place, the positives I hope to one day (soon! Eek!) take from a position in marketing. Maybe I have a future in customer service - taking angry/confused guests and giving them the right information was something I found I really had a knack for. And I don't consider myself an expert at crowd control, but I gained a reputation among our pro staff and especially with the staff at Tiger 1 for being able to manage the lines in the bookstore when ID Card pickup rolled around. One of the most rewarding moments I've had all summer was during class registration, where Sid and I spent the better part of an hour helping this poor little double Math-Econ major, abandoned by the CES advisor, build a class schedule and hearing her gratitude when we had finally done it, with enough hours, having all pre-requisites covered, paced for an on-time graduation, with a pretty awesome schedule time-wise to boot! All in all, this position has given me a lot of great experiences, across the people I have met, the friends I have made, and the skills I have developed/discovered. This has truly been one of the best things I have done in college, and I know there are still plenty of benefits to pay off from it in the future. For now it's time to look forward to living it up my senior year, continuing the friendships I have forged over this summer, and making sure I leave Clemson with no regrets.

It's Been Awhile

So I've never really gotten into a regular swing of posting, and writing has kind of fell to the wayside for me since my last post. Certainly not for a lack of time, as I've been home for a week and a half now. I've just been lacking direction - I have a few minor ideas to tackle sitting on my desktop, but nothing I've really been inspired to write about. I guess I'll just give the standard life update and try to ease back into blogging.

I last left you off at the beginning of Finals Week. This semester was definitely the easiest final schedule I have had at college. I was taking 15 hours, but 3 of those were from OA class. No doubt, I definitely learned a lot and it was something that I looked forward to every Monday; however, not much went into the grades for that class, and there was no final. Additionally, my Business Writing "final" was the culmination of our semester long project working with the Graduate program and the Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities in Greenville. By finals week, all of our work was over - we had put together ways to launch a Facebook Page, Alumni group, and Database for the Governor's School and had given the presentation the Thursday before. So 2/5 were down right off the bat. In addition, the next two were not actual exams. A group paper for my Marketing 450 class - which was definitely a struggle working with my group, as it was all semester, but in terms of my individual work load that was not a difficult paper to write at all. After editing the other group member's portions - some of them two days after they were supposed to have them done by...*sigh* and covering the weaker portions on my own, I printed that out and turned it in a day early. Woohoo! With that paper, I also turned in my Venue Naming Rights Project for my Sports Marketing Strategy class - also a day early. Look at me go. I had taken a lot of time with this project, so I never felt rushed or had to deal with the wrath of procrastination, and I was very happy with the final product. It was a lot of fun getting to work on it, even if it's something I rarely have to tackle in professional life. Add to the fact that I got assigned the venue of RFK Stadium - home of my beloved DC United - and I really ran with it. It will surely be one of the few items in my Eportfolio that will actually be useful to me. By meeting deadlines early and having a light workload, I was able to spend a lot of time studying for my only physical exam, Services Marketing. It was partially cumulative, but it was more heavily weighted towards new material from the end of the semester. I filled out the study guide, had it memorized, and kept on plowing through my studying. I walked in confident and walked out half an hour later feeling as if I nailed it. Side note, I was on the border of an A or B in four classes, and when all was said and done, I ended up with my first 4.0! Although, I'm still very bitter that I ended up with a 3.97 freshmen year - I was taking 17 hours had all A's except for a B in my one credit Business 101 class because my margins did not match the rubric requirements on one of our only grades all semester. Womp. But nonetheless, it is a special accomplishment! I would not have guessed that this semester would be my best academically, but things came through in the end. Side note: I considered writing a "Junior Year Wrap Up" post, but just could not gather my thoughts enough over these past two weeks to sum up my year in an entry. In that vein though, this year held a lot of high expectations coming in, and it has gone out with a lot of unexpected surprises.

Which brings me to my next life update: Ladies, I am officially off the market. I won't go into the full back story, but ever since we returned from Spring Break, we had been talking/hanging out/dating/whatever label you want to put on it. Things were getting pretty serious, and by the last week I decided it was time to address the elephant in the room of "what we were" and where we were headed from here. I sought and got some great advice from close friends - especially Greg - but I was still nervous about how things would go, if it would get weird between us, etc. etc. It went well though - we discussed it, had a good talk, and decided that although the timing was indeed unfortunate, we were going to become official. It seems silly, but it's nice to have that validation - even though it was pretty clear how we both felt about each other, it was nice to hear it spoken plainly, and I really look forward to what the future holds. I don't want to get ahead of myself and get caught up in my thoughts, but regardless I'm still looking forward to it. We're long distance for the summer, which will certainly have its challenges, but in the grand scheme of things, a summer is not that long. I'll visit her at least before going off to Orientation, and hopefully we can work something out for post Orientation plans as well. It's always nice to have little milestones to look forward to like that. For now, she's out of contact away on a Maymester trip while I've got plenty of free time at home, but it's been nice all things considered. I miss her, sure, and even something as simple as a text here or there during the day is sorely missed. But it's been nice to have time to myself to do what I please before my schedule gets crazy busy. By that time she'll be working full time and I'll be running every which way with a hectic Orientation schedule, but at least I'll be surrounded by great people and have something to constantly be working on. Throw in some phone calls and Skype dates, and I think it can work out with our busy lives. From there, who knows how the last month of my summer will play out - we'll tackle that when we come to it. All in all, I'm very happy with where we stand and what lies on the horizon.

Completely off topic: After getting a new hard drive, losing all my files, and regaining my music without my precious play counts, I have embarked on the grand venture of listening to every song on my iTunes straight through. I have nearly 6,000 songs which if I just let it run all day and night would take me 15 and a half days. I've been going all of April and halfway through May, and I've made it to.....F! Granted, I have large deposits in my library and F is one of them - accompanied with A, D, and S - so I have made quite a bit of progress. But I have also noticed some bands that have not made the transition to my new iTunes, which I'll have to go back and add. It sort of bugs me in a nitpicky way that I've lost all of my ratings and play counts, but at the same time it's kind of nice to have a fresh start and be able to reevaluate everything I have. Going straight through all of my Eminem shortly followed by Emmure discographies was an over 8 hour undertaking, but they're both artists that I have not listened to in quite a bit of time. It was nice to have an excuse to just listen through it all without any hesitation of "do I really want to listen to this right now?" I'm looking forward to when I get to all my Jay-Z stuff as well, to really give that a deeper listen. Who knows how long this project will take - it might not even all get listened to by the end of the summer!

All said and done, my time at home has been much needed. Day to day there's nothing real special on my agenda, but it's nice to take a break from schoolwork and just relax. I've picked up an old favorite video game, playing a little baseball on the PS2 and doing some work with the Phillies franchise I started...oh gosh, four, five years ago? Allow me to nerd out for a while, the progress I've made in a full 162 game season baseball franchise is something that I'm oddly proud of. I'm also regularly scouring On Demand and Netflix for offbeat, interesting movies that I would enjoy, catching How I Met Your Mother on TV when I can, and even dabbling in some Friends! Would you look at that. I've also got some doctor's appointments and am working on tying up some ends before I ship back to Clemson for Orientation. I've spent a lot of time tossing and turning at night running over what I want my message to incoming students to be, what stories I want to share with them, what me opening up to complete strangers and sharing my most vulnerable stories would look like - who I could affect, what lives I could...touch? Dare I say, change? I can only hope to have such an impact. Even if I never realize it, if four years down the line a current high school senior looks back on their college career before graduation and can pick out something I said, some piece of advice I laid out, or just a feeling of acceptance and transition into college...that's a very powerful thing, to truly make a difference in someone else's life. I guess that's the passion that really inspires people to get into teaching. Not to mention, there's plenty of tangible stuff I need to do as well - get some nice khaki shorts, decorate a fellow OA's clipboard, and make my poster. Although I have a design in mind, my actual poster board lies with Tanner currently, since he was nice enough to pick it up, so I can't actually work on that until I'm back in Clemson. Regardless, despite the abundance of free time, there still is a lot to do quickly coming up on the horizon.

That's where I'm at with my life now - I need to make more of an effort to write, and I'd like to expand a little more. A lot of my close friends still don't know I've been keeping a blog, but I still want to keep a fairly small circle of friends who are aware of it. It's a bit of a conundrum - I don't want to plaster it all over Facebook and Twitter, but I also don't want to shove it in people's faces either. "'Hey how's your summer' 'I HAVE A BLOG.'" I just need to let things progress naturally, I suppose.