Orientation Wrap-Up

I'm going to go out on a limb and claim that 60% of all orientation week events are useless. I'll preface this by saying (although I'm not actually prefacing it, or I would have said this first) that I really valued my time in the classroom working with my mentor and classmates and did genuinely find some of the information important, useful, and well communicated. But let me give a quick run-down of Day 5's events:

9:00am-10:00am: All Graduate students at Purdue show up for a "welcome." The speakers include three deans who welcome us, a Graduate Student Council president who asks us to join up, and the mayor of West Lafayette who tells us about all the parks that the town has to offer. Let's be honest with ourselves; how many times do I have to be welcomed to the University by people who could care less what my name is or what I'm doing. One of our welcoming speakers was the Dean of Research who, though seemingly a nice guy, proceeded to tell us about all the opportunities available to Grad students... in the sciences. At one point he made a comment about lab safety because "all of you, at some point, will be dealing with some radioactive isotope of some sort." I turned to my English peers with a paniced look and asked if that was true. Perhaps, in addition to the foreign language requirement, I was being asked to pass a lab-exam, too. Regardless, the entire event could have been summed up with a toast at the complimentary breakfast that followed.

10:00am-11:00am: Complimentary coffee and cake. This was more of an activities fair than anything else, except that half the tables were unpopulated (since most of the student body isn't back yet) and didn't really have much to offer as a result.

11:00am-12:00pm: Talk on Employee Benefits. This hour-long snooze-bomb was basically a verbal retelling of everything I'd already read in pamphlet form a week ago, or summary of information easily accessible on a website. What's worse is that the speakers knew it and kept repeating that all this information could be found on the website.

1:30-2:30: Syllabus discussion meeting. This was actually the only useful part of the day. We got to meet with other (veteran) instructors teaching the same syllabus approach as us and discuss some of the opportunities available.

2:30-4:00: Composition Teacher Meeting. 200 of us gather for a welcome back message, a few words from the graduate student council VICE president, a few reminders about things that have already been told to us once or twice before, followed by the highly amusing "introduction of new instructors" portion. Again, valuable information that could be easily condensed rather than spread out over a very long day.

That being said, I think the program and the staff are terrific. I've never seen such enthusiasm (I'm more familiar with the bitter sarcasm or tacit compliance of other institutions), so it was a breath of fresh air. Anyway, Orientation is over now. Last weekend before school starts. Getting a bit nervous.