Charles Rico
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Major: Biology & Asian Studies Class Year: Senior Hometown: Woodside, NY Favorite Class: Bio 203 |
Hello there! I just want to tell you that this week is our official introduction to the freshman orientation. It takes a lot of getting used to, because I feel as though we have been well programmed to assist in the transfer orientation and now we encounter a new scenario. It’s an entirely new ballgame, but I am ready to play!
Speaking of games and sports, we began our week with the incoming athletes. Along with the sun shining brightly...yes I said the sun, this is not a typo, and this orientation is unlike any other because we have not dealt with any scheduling. The advisors in the Athletics department will do their advising, because they have to be tailored to their particularities with classes, practice, exams, and games. We are the first line of welcoming for these very talented students. Aside from interacting with them, we have taken them to get their I.D.’s taken, followed by a mini-tour, on the way to the sports complex, where serious advising occurs.
The second day is our University Scholars day. And as usual, I am nervous to face the challenge that comes with a whole new change of routine but I enjoy challenging myself, so I hold up my open arms, to whatever the day may bring. For one, we will have to get quite personal with our students, because we share our entire day with them . . . all right, so this doesn’t really make me nervous. So, my day begins in the parking lot, and what I do is just point the families and the students in the right direction, which is towards the S.A.C. (Student Activities Center), and also to guide them into the parking lot around the construction. It feels good, to be the first welcoming faces for many of our guests. This is followed by the tours.
Giving campus tours is something I have attempted before with visiting family members, but I cannot say that it is my forte. The beauty of the tour is that Courtney had put so much energy into our sort of structured, tour check-list, and directions, that I had felt like a professional tour-guide (ok! Maybe I’m over exaggerating a little, but only a little). The end of our day is perhaps the most intimidating for me. I’m sitting in a table of 5-6 new students, and I am supposed to advise them all; which in the end is not as hard as I expected because they already had their advising planning form organized by their advisor made according to their majors and/or area of interests. The day is going smoothly but it gets even smoother and more delicious towards the end when Rick Gatteau surprises us all with baked goodies!!! Rick, if you are reading this, I want you to know that the brownies are magical!!!!!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!
The final day of the week is our Honors College/ WISE day. To begin with, this day is most unusual, because I have not been with them for their first half of the day. Nope! Some of the orientation leaders, including myself, had been asked to come in later in the day, just for the advising part. I begin to freak out because I have not had the opportunity to warm up! I’m jumping into advising without meeting them!!!! But once again, the day ends up being quite nice! The experience is more personal since our advising groups are much smaller than usual. The half-day ends beautifully and most of the students are well helped!
This is an interesting week, but it is a fun one! I will not be getting used to this schedule, because next week, we will be working with the undergraduate colleges . . . And I am as ready as I’ll ever be, along with warmed up and pumped up! I can’t wait to tell you about next week! Farewell to you all! And thank you for reading some of my experiences!
Week 4
Greetings to all, I want to thank you ahead for sharing your time with me!
Congratulations to the orientation leaders, the advisors, and everyone who we have been working with, for completing the second week of our 2009 orientation!!!
I can confidently say that I am beginning to get a hang of working with the incoming students, and their parents; as the day progresses, I feel more and more eager to help out as many people as possible. I find much interest in making a connection with everyone . . . call me strange if you must but I feel that we all have a common ground we share with one another, though it may not be the same for each person.
For today, I am in the Skylight lounge, and I am waiting to make contact with all of the students. There may be a question or there may be a fondness for conversation, in either case, I am receptive and open and I guess it is my duty to make sure that while they wait for their advisors or their assigned presentations, they should have a pretty good time. I am a bit shy at first, but as soon as the ice is broken, it is all smooth sailing. I enjoy hearing about their previous schools, in comparison with Stony Brook, and why they decided to transfer. I do my best to let them know that Stony Brook is full of fun, opportunity, resources, and fantastic professors! One concern that has come up several times, from some of the commuter students, is that all the clubs and gyms, are only open to the residents . . . this fills me with energy because I get to lighten up their day — here is my response to this concern: “To our commuters and to our residents all the clubs, recreation centers, recreation events, and many other programs, are all open to all attending Stony Brook students; we’re in this together!”
For my second day I will help check in the students, and then help out with the registering . . .which gives me nervous excitement, it is a work in progress, but I still get a bit weak in the knees for a moment; I’ll warm up to them as soon as I see them, I know I will. I am happy to know that many of the students knew exactly how to use the solar system, which if not yet mastered; it will be as the semester progresses. For those of you who hear this for the first time, this solar system has nothing to do with the planets! From a student’s perspective, it is our connection to our accounts as students at SBU. This is where we register for classes, where we pay our bills, where we manage our financial aid awards, where we potentially find jobs, where we deal with housing, campus cash, and so much more! But as I said, many students know what they are doing, and that just leaves me with the time to speak with them. I’m lucky to meet one person who happens to come from the same town as me, and so I spoke to her from experience, about the transition from our neighborhood to the campus. One gentleman comes for the same college, we review the campus, and our experiences in our previous school; once again with confidence, but without being bias (ok maybe just a little bias, come on! I’m a Sea Wolf), I compare the difference between the two. I feel good when I’m able to feel what they feel, also to sort of give them a preview of what they will see, and this goes for all of the transfer students.
This is the part where I get a little bit personal, but you are welcome to listen! At first I must admit that investing my entire summer to being an orientation leader seemed like a terrifying idea, but as time passes by I don’t even notice that I am not having a traditional summer vacation. I am still enjoying my time and this is the most productive “vacation” I’ve ever had. To anyone interested in becoming an Orientation Leader, please, I highly recommend it. It is opening me up, teaching me to be out there, to not be shy, and to be leader, yup. I’m hitting another growth spur, except this is facilitated, and I’m not getting any taller!
Once again, I want to thank you for your time! I’m honored that you have shared your precious time with me! Thank you!! I wish you all the best!
Week 3
Finally, the show has begun! I went from tryouts, to training, to being a team player. I couldn’t really sleep the night before, but it wasn’t because of fear. I was more anxious to begin, and I can compare feelings to the excitement the night prior to a family trip to Six Flags Great Adventure. All of the other Orientation Leaders are calm as ever, and ready to start, but I am a bit nervous, and I don’t really know how exactly to react to anything that is about to happen, but once again, I am anxious to see all the training come to life. Still I am holding on to the last few minutes of pre-talk given, before we all go to our assigned positions. This should be right up my ally, because we will be working with the transfer students, and I happen to be a transfer student as well!
So, my duties for the day are to work with the parents! To be honest, that is great; I find that working with parents is my forte! But then I see all the parents walk in, and my stomach gets tight, and I get a little tense. After the warm welcome, however, I begin to loosen up and really appreciate all the parents and their concerns for their children, and I empathize with them. It is as if to say, if I had a daughter/son coming to this school, how would I react? As the day progresses, I do my best to answer any questions and I even encourage questions; I want them to feel satisfied with choosing Stony Brook, I want them to feel secure about Stony Brook, I want them to feel as comfortable as my parents do.
In order to keep the flames of our passion for work going, we are each given a different task each day. On my second day of week one, I am lucky enough to be able assist the students in registration. Oh yeah!! I get to meet and get to know my soon-to-be-fellow-classmates! However, I get this tightness in my stomach once again, and I keep asking the more experienced O.L.s whether I should be shaking in my boots (or sneakers)! They all give me the same responses, “ no way, just enjoy yourself, enjoy getting to work with the students, it is actually quite fun!” and . . . they speak the truth!!!!! I am truly enjoying this.
I find myself connecting with the students on many grounds. Some share the same interests as I do. Some of the students transferred for the same reasons as I did, and many have given expressed the same concerns that I once had, so my day is nothing but great conversations, heart-to-heart connection, and of course, productive registration of many students! I am lucky enough to meet people from across the United States, several from other countries, some that live near my home, and I get to learn something about them. Also, we are given business cards to share and distribute when the time is right, and the time has seemed right with every student, however, I had run out fairly quickly!
I want to mention some other, sort of off topic ideas that came to mind this past week. One is the awesome food being served in the Student Activities Center (SAC)! Each time we have lunch I have a hard time deciding on what to eat because the food is so good and there are so many options to choose from, the best part is that it pretty healthy! I’ll give more details soon.
As a rookie orientation leader, my journey has just begun, but it seems to be filled with bright smiles, and a ton of knowledge to come. I’m still learning more and more, even though training has ended. I want to give a speech about how I highly recommend this experience to all, but I’ll save that for the end of this fun ride.
I wish you all the best in your studies, work, life, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to share this precious time with you! Until next-time, Goodbye!
Week 2!!! I was a bit excited for the second round of training!!! There’s just so much to learn, and so much preparation for our debut! But first, we must assemble the binders and all the goodies we will hand to our incoming student and their parents.
We were all split up into several groups and obviously each group had a different task. My team, a.k.a, the “BEETS”, was working with the “Ha Mad Kool Friendship Alliance”. I bet that sounds a bit bizarre, I had a great time thinking a name for the team, we even have a chant . . .I guess I should let you hear it( or read it!), here it goes: “I-EE-OO, Orientation!!!!” I hope I wrote it correctly! Sorry for going off topic, so as I was saying, our group’s task was to assemble the bags for the incoming freshman. At first it was a bit intimidating to see all the boxes and bags we had to prepare, but we worked as a unit, like the way our cells work together, each doing a small part to benefit our entire body. Every little cell is important for overall success. Our success was due to our assembly line formation. We were fast, too fast for the materials we had to work with, so we eventually had to just repackage several items into every bag; Yup, we were that good!
For the training days, I learned so much about the several different orientations, from WISE, Honors College, University Scholars, and the Athletes. Also, we were lucky enough to meet Courtney from Campus Res. and she is one cool lady! She always comes up with fun activities to keep us busy. My favorite of which was a samurai game made to test your reflexes. I won’t go into details, but when little by little, more and more people get eliminated and it just gets faster and faster and more and more intense, but I had a ton of fun!
Alright, that was a taste of our last week of training . . . yes, I said last . . . I found myself holding on to these moments as best as I could, because next week, we begin our journeys as orientation leaders. I’m pretty nervous but, I can’t wait to see meet all the transfer students and their parents! I hope I am helpful and I hope that I show them all a good time!!!
Thank you for listening and I wish you all the best!
And for the incoming students, don’t hesitate to say hello, I promise I’m pretty approachable! Good luck!
I’ve begun what seems to be the most exiting summer of my life . . . and I mean it. My name is Charles Rico, I will be a senior this coming fall, I am biology major, with the hopes of becoming a doctor one day! I transferred from Queens College after my freshman year. As a sophomore, I never really took advantage of the potential joy that could be provided by stony brook. I was still adjusting to not being home, and to opening up to so many different people to befriend, but that all changed in my junior year.
I had a senior friend who was very involved in the school, her name was Karen, she had suggested so much, and I followed her advice; she was always happy and busy! She told me to become an Orientation Leader, because it was a fun experience. Initially I wasn’t up for the challenge, until I grew a desire to put myself become someone on campus by getting more involved on campus, and I followed her advice. And... here I am, happy and honored to be an orientation leader for the summer of 2009.
The first day was a bit intimidating, because we were supposed to learn 50+ names and faces! Surprisingly enough, in a matter of about an hour, it’s safe to say that we all learned each other’s names!!! We left work early and we all moved into our new rooms in the West Apartments! The second day was amazing, and for me at least, the sun shined through the cloudy, humid day. We went on a trip to South Hampton SBU campus! It was a fantastic trip because I had never been there before and also because we were given several fun team and leadership building exercises, one of which was a scavenger hunt throughout this new and mysterious campus – we were brought much closer to the rest of the team members (of which were assigned to before departing).
During the rest of the week, we did some pretty informative training. We worked with all of the undergraduate colleges on campus, including their college advisors and the quad directors. As the week progressed I felt more and more important, no, more like an adult. We met with many important people on campus who are way high on the Stony Brook food-chain and they did not treat us like college students, they treated us more like co-workers or fellow advisors, and I really appreciate that, because it is making Stony Brook that much more comfortable for me.
I’ve met so many wonderful people during this 1st week, I’ve interacted with much of the faculty that deals with incoming students and Stony Brook, this large university, is becoming much smaller, but I mean that in a good way. Just like home, I am familiar with it and with the people in it, and it’s not such a big intimidating place for me, because I know my way around; Stony Brook is becoming more like home!
Also as I sat through the training, I realized that everything we were presented, for the most part, was new to me. I guess you can call me blind, but I wasn’t really aware of all the wonderful resources and opportunities just waiting to be tapped into by us, the students. Stony Brook really cares about its students, but I realized that we have to make an effort to connect with those resources. As the training days pass, I’ve learned so much for the orientations to come, and also for myself as well, and I will take full advantage of the knowledge I am lucky to receive, and I will share and spread that information, so that more and more people can take the wonderful fruits this campus has to offer!
Next week seems pretty intense, but very informative. however, I love to learn, so I am excited for next week! Thank you for reading my blog, I hope you enjoyed it. If anyone has any questions about the program, about the campus, anything, please feel free to ask. I wish you all the best in everything pertaining to you! Farewell!