Learning from what we did during our previous session, we orientation advisors set out this week to make an even better experience than before for an even larger group. Even with this group, I received only five students instead of the usual 20. Five was enough to add color to this week’s experience in all the required programs. By hosting a wing, I also needed to lead a discussion about social justice and campus issues. During the first discussion, they remained silent because they were outnumbered 4:1 by women. I fixed that by talking about my experiences during these discussions and reiterating that they are safe spaces for everybody to make themselves heard. That appeared to work, as indicated by their voices during the campus issues discussion.

Pre-advising (I prefer to call it peer advising) brought another group of students with diverse needs, some of which tested my ability to think on my feet: One came in with so many credits from placement tests and dual credits that I had to use a calculator to figure out how many hours he has in total and I had to run a degree audit on two of them to find some missing information. As the day wrapped up, I was impressed that I was able to get people in and out quicker or have time to show them the ins and outs of registration. That night, I participated in “lobby advising” again. This is for students to seek further clarification and for us to give them some tricks of the trade. Our highlight of the week was:

A student showed some clear signs of frustration with coming up with her schedule because she received conflicting information. On one hand, we told her that her AP Calculus BC test was good for only M 408C (so she will need to take M 408D) while her real advisor told her that it was good for both M 408C and M 408D (so she will have to take M 427K). Despite our attempts to help and assure her everything is going to be all right, we had to have two peer advisors working on this: I investigated why she received the wrong information while another one kept working on her schedule. Someone eventually found the advisor’s home number through the UT directory, and she proceeded to call it at 12:30 at night to show her displeasure. It turns out that the real advisor gave her an outdated handout, but I was not quick enough to stop her from getting revenge.

All in all, I am proud of my wing for being such a respectful group, I hope that everything works out well for that woman I mentioned earlier, and I am proud of being part of one of the best orientation programs in the nation. I never realized that I can be this good at working with people, and I will definitely continue this for the rest of my job and beyond this job. I received a small talking-to because of my attire. Indeed, I needed new pants because I have only one pair of bottoms is without obvious signs of wear, tear, and abuse After moving to a different room, I went to Old Navy to buy myself two pairs of long kakhis (you really cannot go wrong with those).

Look! I’m Sunny! I wear a bicycle helmet everywhere I ride and a huge grin for my students!