Tuesday 9 September 2014

Initial Impressions

I was never too big on the orientations during the "Week of Welcome" held at my University. I remember my first year was filled with half-hearted cheers and chants within our arbitrary groups. We toured around the campus all day as the coordinators tried to get us excited for the upcoming term.

Then the following week all the "cheer" and "enthusiasm" is gone and everyone goes their separate ways to their own classes, never to interact with each other again. You don't feel any sense of unity or pride being a student at this University. I was pretty meh about the upcoming term.

Yay.

I really didn't expect anything different for the Business orientation but I opted to go anyways. You're supposed to network as much as possible so I thought it be a good headstart for myself. Get to know a few people maybe, figure out if anything could be useful for me in the upcoming year.

The orientation certainly started out differently than I was accustomed to. I really didn't expect the Dean of Business to come in, call everyone in the room "One giant dysfunctional family", and then proceed to wear a green t-shirt over his suit.

Then he got all of us to wear our complimentary green Business t-shirts. Now we had a way to identify other Business students throughout the day. We were special, we had earned the right to wear this green t-shirt. No one else on Campus did.

Pride. Check.


The Dean wasn't the only person of interest during the opening speeches. A few people talked about the co-op program that I  recently got accepted into. I knew the general basis of what was going, I mean I got in.

The next couple of weeks for me will have a lot of seminars and workshops to help me prepare and optimize my chances of getting hired by a potential company. But I don't think I could have prepared for the stats they threw at me such as:

  • Co-op students have a ~100% hire rate upon graduation.
  • Co-op students earn 5-10% more than the average graduating business student.
  • There is an abundance of Human Resources positions and not enough people applying to these positions (I'm a Human Resources major).

Excited for upcoming term. Check.


Next we were broken up into arbitrary groups, introductions, what's your major, blah blah, standard orientation stuff. What differs though is that immediately afterwards we started competing against other groups.

Like trying to market innocent objects as highly inappropriate adult toys for a panel of judges.

I think my group should have won, but apparently we got disqualified because we used additional props. I guess binding up one of our presenters with our belts was a bad idea.

But in this way I got to interact with other people, actually want to know their names. After the orientation I joined a random group of other business students (which I identified by their green shirts) and we went for drinks. 

Just like that, I was a part of their group and laughing like I'd known them my entire life.

Unity. Check.

If there's anything bad about this I have to re-enabled Facebook. It's the only way I can maintain this growing network of new associates and potential meet-ups, events, drinking nights, etc. etc.. in the future.

It also means no more stupid cat pictures as my profile picture. Or rather, I have to tone it down, significantly.

But it's a small price to pay. A week later I'm still greeting and spending small amounts of time with the people I met during orientation. I'm looking into joining a few clubs as well to help bolster my resume, my volunteer experience is abysmal.

Things are looking good so far, I hope it keeps up.

19 comments:

  1. Hurrah for a great start! I'm glad you went to the orientation, and I'm glad it was a success.

    A 100% hire rate is pretty impressive!

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  2. That post-graduation hire rate is awesome. And I love that the dean was that down-to-earth.

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  3. Sounds great! Clearly someone who knew what they were doing organized your orientation events. Be sure to join a few clubs with girls in them, eh? You never know . . . !

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  4. Awesome that things are looking good, blah to facebook though, but if it is in need, have to use it.

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  5. You sound like you are in the perfect spot for getting a great job

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  6. That sounds super sweet! Cherish the upcoming term, and all the experiences that come with it! Be sure to try and stay in touch with the cool people you meet too, even after graduation and whatnot.

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  7. I don't think anybody ever really stays gone from FB. Its so popular that even the older members of my family have it. It's harder to find people who aren't on it than are.

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  8. I think your future is definitely looking up! Sounds like you you're going to have an excellent year.

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  9. That actually sounds really great. Having to reactivate facebook to keep up with a social life is a CON? Geeze.

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  10. Sounds like lots of positive stuff from this orientation.

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  11. with FB page you need to very careful as Job hunters check them

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  12. Nice. I hope your good experiences keep on coming.

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  13. Good for you! This will be a wonderful time in your life if you can focus on those positives.

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  14. Since my move, it's been so difficult to meet new friends {doesn't help we're in a retirement community}. How awesome that you made so many new friends? And also, I totallly would've picked your group to win...what, no bondage allowed? =)

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  15. That sounds awesome - not just the HR job prospects, but the bonding experience. I went to a tech school for IT, so every bad stereotype you've heard about nerds I got to see played out in real life. Even the infamous "which is better, Star Wars or Star Trek?" argument that lasted for two damn hours, yes, that happened. In other words... I didn't do a lot of bonding with my classmates.

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  16. I would miss cat pictures! Glad it's going so well. And I am sure there are many volunteer organizations that would benefit from your help.

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  17. I LOVE your blog!! It makes my day :) My life's going... POW!... downhill with an explosion right now so thanks for defusing the bomb!

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  18. this reminds me of a class I never registered for but totally sat in on for the entire semester without the teacher noticing
    it was some criminal justice nonsense and he made t shirts for everyone saying "victim" on the front and then the cause on the back of how they were victimized
    it was kinda funny the first couple days to see everyone around campus in them, then it got kinda creepy when you realized how many victims there were and how nobody was labeled with criminal or predator or anything else just victims and non victims

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  19. Sounds like you're having a blast. :) We were bad at socializing properly in college. Not surprising, considering art uni. is made up of all the weird kids from high school....

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