So what have I been up to since arriving home?  Well… put it this way: My parents immediately put me to work.  It was a diverse mix of video editing, cleaning, and taking care of my little brothers.  Besides that, I have been meeting up with my non-OA friends (I miss them too) and studying some things I feel rusty with in EE.

I have always loved working registration for the Cockrell School of Engineering, and this week was no different.  My feat of the week came when someone showed clear signs of losing her composure because she was unable to register for one of the classes she needed.  I looked in the course schedule to see what I could do.  I saw a section open and added her right into it.  Not only was she very happy, but she learned what to do when bad things happen: Keep your cool.

“Follies” is a time for the staff to say goodbye and to make light of each other’s ways, give/get unofficial awards, and for returning orientation advisors to exchange gifts.  After a spell of laughter came a lot of hugging and crying.  This all-nighter was not a good idea because the deadline to move out is at noon.  Thank goodness I packed!

As I may have mentioned earlier, we orientation advisors help the first-year students choose their first semester’s classes.  This process is known as pre-advising because they will see a real advisor later.  During this, College of Liberal Arts pre-advisors are asked to take a tally of how many students want to transfer into another college.  In a turn of events, I had two orientees wishing to transfer: one to business and another to psychology.

On Friday night, the supervisors put on a banquet to show their appreciation for the work we did and to recognize some outstanding orientation advisors.  One nomination read something like, “This person eats, lives, breathes, sleeps orientation.”  In my mind, I thought, “That ain’t me — I sleep between my duties;” but to my surprise, that person was me.  Gee… I wish I could stay awake for even longer periods of time with as little caffeine as possible.

Tomorrow: Transfer orientation.

During preadvising, I had a student who not only had a medical bar, but wanted to switch to Mechanical Engineering.  It is unfortunate to see that he was barred from registration for four weeks when UHS gets his test results, and I sympathized with him when he talked about how inefficient the bureaucracy is here in America.  I agreed with him, and ensured him that I find UT more efficient with respect to paperwork since so many things can be done using UT Direct.  During the last day, I managed to come across him again, and he brought the good news that he is able to get the doctors to fax the results.  I reminded him to check back every day and register as quickly as possible.

You may recall from my second session that I had a residential wing of five students.  A commuter wing consists of groups of students who will not be living in Jester East with us during orientation.  Although it is obvious that keeping people orderly gets more difficult as the group size increases, my partner and I put on a great show.  When we talked about campus issues, I was surprised by how open the students were about a topic as sensitive as sexual assault/relationship violence — they shared experiences about working with survivors, and bounced ideas off each other.  Our feedback forms included things such as:

• They made me confident that college upper classmen weren’t all jerks.
• Sunny was hilarious and *** was great!  {Heart} them both!
• Both had a very warm and caring presence.  I could talk to them about anything.
• I like the laptop
• They gave us the warmest welcome possible and made us feel as though we were already UT students.

The next sessions are going to test our wits as classes continue to fill up and students begin to lose their composure.  I will be heading to South Padre tomorrow with half the staff (excluding supervisors!) for a break.

No drama happened until I showed up to my shift for registration (one of my favorite duties, by the way). There was an education major who was unable to register for any of her classes because they were closed. Being someone qualified to only advise for engineering, the best thing I can do was to get the appropriate advisors and the registrar. In the staff meeting, Fishbowl delivers a “Got Krunk” award to an outstanding orientation advisor. Little did I know that I would receive this award.  It is true that we all strive for attention and accolades, but I will continue to do my best for myself and for incoming students.

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!

The fun began on Wednesday when a coworker got locked inside his restroom. Although it seems ridiculous that this would happen, it is entirely possible because he lives in a room with connecting bath, and the locks are outside the bathroom. With both sides locked, he was stuck for one hour. The emergency maintenance workers came and revealed to the group that the door to his room was unlocked, so any of us could have gone in and rescued him… oops! In any case, here is a picture of him as he was rescued:

As an orientation advisor, I get to help students choose their first classes. Everybody I pre-advised trusted my advice, and I gave them a few “tricks of the trade” to take home with them. The only special case I came across was a summer first-year student who is taking some classes in the summer and received credit for most of the first-year courses. I had no choice but to put him in a class recommended for a second-year student with the blessing of a general engineering class associated with it. I hope he does well; and if he doesn’t, he can hunt me down and shake his fist at me as I pass by him.

On the night before registration, we had fun with “Ducks on a Bus,” a comedy show, and “Club Jester,” an unofficial party the orientation advisors put on as an alternative to drinking parties (we do our best to keep these first-year students out of trouble ). Although our first shows are serious in nature, that committee reserves the right to make fun of them. For example, the show has a monologue for a World of Warcraft player based on a Social Justice monologue:

Here. Me. Game.

On Friday, we celebrated the departure of Boys’ State. Although they had nothing to do with the orientation program, they resided in Jester West and presented an annoyance to the staff, especially since they were looking at our women staff and students in disrespectful ways. That is really not surprising because they are not allowed to even talk to women! Tomorrow will bring another 1,200 students as well as parking duties. Please wish us all the best of luck.

My committee, OAABBQ (Orientation Advisor Activities and BBQ), is responsible for the day 1 barbecue, the break room (the OAsis), and the trip in the week that we do not have orientation. This room is located in a study lounge, which obviously does not look very thrilling to begin with. Our responsibility is to make it look great! To do so, we worked hours beyond what the supervisors scheduled for “committee work,” often working into 12 or 1 in the morning. As a result of this, we received a slight amount of bashing behind our backs. We were known as the committee that did not work very much and clumped together like no other committee does.

When we revealed the OAsis on Thursday, our work finally paid off. As each committee stepped in, we received looks of amazement, like this one:

Friday consisted of running through all the shows. Despite a few technical problems (such as a cohort’s computer being annoying), everybody was surprisingly patient and the actors were great! Unfortunately, I was only able to get pictures of the Midnight Prowl run-through. This is a picture of their reenactment of the 1961 Panty Raid:

Even as someone who is well-versed in technology, I still think that the technical portions are still the most difficult because errors in the final product cannot be covered up by any human act and hence become more distracting. Without the Multimedia and Publicity committee’s help, we would not have the amazing movie clips we saw on Thursday. As a matter of fact, they were amazing to the point of receiving a well-deserved standing ovation.

In a matter of only three days, practice will be over, and it will be time to reveal our work to the 7,200 incoming students and parents. The uniting forces for this product were teamwork, open sharing of thoughts, and the bonds of friendship. By following each other’s instructions, we became leaders and followers at the same time. I think I have said this once, but I will say it again: I could not be happier taking this job. I feel more confident and capable of working in a group of people.

Although there are many responsibilities that come with being an OA, there are only a few “core” responsibilities. One of them is to work with a “wing” of approximately 20 (residential) to 80 (commuter) students. During meetings, I present information that is relevant to them and be “on-call” for them. Like each wing, I had to come up with a theme. In my case, I decided on using my noise-making stuffed animals as a theme. Although my fellow OAs find them amusing and slightly annoying, they rest assured knowing that they will be on display for a significant portion of my job. Besides that, I worked in the OAABBQ committee to prepare the break room and other events for orientation advisors.

At every opportunity possible this week, the committee would retreat to The OAsis, a break room for orientation advisors. Our committee consists of five women and two men (including myself). Until we reveal it on Thursday next week, the place is our retreat as we make preparations. This year’s theme is being on the beach. As we worked together, my cohorts talked about a few things that I did not know much about, bringing out the quiet side of me. They are very much committed to taking me out of my shell and beyond my comfort zone.

One of the things that are slightly beyond my comfort zone is speaking in public. To improve this, I signed myself up to perform a Social Justice monologue. The Social Justice performance exposes incoming students to the wide range of social and gender identities they will encounter during their time on campus and attempt to dispel some myths that surround each identity. Following these, we break the students up into smaller discussion sessions. Although I am currently unable to sign up for those yet, I plan on leading a discussion session on Social Justice and Campus Issues (campus safety, alcohol use, and sexual assault).

In these upcoming weeks, I anticipate the challenge of speaking to a group of people. In return, I hope to gain more confidence in presentations and gain better intuition on reading the audience and people. I am also glad that the person I love has been accepted to the University of Texas, and I look forward to being her orientation advisor.