Summer has officially come to an end, and the new school year is kicking off. It’s time for students to move in.
Returning Guilford College students already know where they can park on campus, what to do if they misplace their key, and how to access their mailboxes. However, new students do not.
That’s why the college hosts orientation. Orientation provides new students with the opportunity to learn about the campus and meet each other. In the past, orientation was hosted in the summer over the course of multiple days. This year, orientation was combined with Week of Welcome activities, condensed into six hours across two days.
Students met in the dining hall at 9 a.m. for mandatory orientation. Day one began Monday, Aug. 18, the day after Guilford’s new students moved in, with rotating 25-minute sessions—Consent, Campus Engagement, SEL Best Practices, “Where Do I Go When?,” Welcoming Activity, and “Game of Life: Financial Management.”
Tuesday, Aug. 19, students followed the same routine, but this time with different sessions: Transitioning from a High School Student to a College Student, Technology Resources, Academic Resources, What does it mean to attend a “Quaker College?,” Living on Campus as a Resident, and Expectations of a Guilfordian (Academic and Conduct).
Was this new compact approach to orientation helpful for incoming Quakers?
Guilford students are involved in many capacities across campus. Many new students are already involved in leadership or athletic programs. These students moved in before Aug. 17 for training camps and then were given the tasks of juggling practice or meetings alongside orientation.
Many student-athletes, like Sadie Cyr, a first-year student on the triathlon team, saw the difficulties many students faced. When asked whether or not she believed balancing orientation with athletics was attainable, Cyr said that while she did not have many issues due to her practice schedule, she was able to see how it affected others. “I have friends from soccer who had to miss practice. They were trying to balance with the idea of, ‘My teammates are here, but I have to be at orientation.’”
They felt conflicted. ” Being new to campus and immediately being given the responsibility of finding time to attend two very important events was a lot for some people to handle.
Like Sadie, other Guilfordians balanced leadership meetings and other time-consuming commitments that affected their first week on campus.
Ulysses Cunningham, an Honors and Bonner first-year, said, “It’s difficult for a couple of days to prepare someone for a few months, but I think that orientation helped to reinforce ideas that get people moving in the right direction.” This shows that while two days might not fully prepare students, orientation served as an introduction to what they could expect.
This new orientation wasn’t without hiccups, but by asking new students, such as first-year Oliver Hepler, we have insights into how to wrap up what some of our new students thought of this new approach. Hepler said, “I had so much trouble getting oriented—having honors orientation while also figuring out how to do everything at once—but I still would not choose a different school. I absolutely love it here.”
New students cannot possibly learn everything Guilford has to offer during orientation, no matter how long it lasts. Part of the college experience is finding things out for yourself. But the consensus seems to show that new Guilfordians appreciated the opportunity to learn a little more about the campus they will call their own for about the next four years.
Will the combined Week of Welcome and orientation remain, or will Guilford return to keeping the two separate? It remains to be seen what Guilford will plan for next year.
