orientation

it's july. woo hoo.

now that i've welcomed you to my blog, i guess i should start with how i came to spend my first summer in boston:

i've been working with boston university's orientation staff since may 14. my official title is Program Assistant (PA), and i basically do all kinds of office stuff along with data entry, processing mail, and organizing little events that take place during Parent Orientation. this summer, i'm the COM program assistant, which means that i am the liason between the college of communication and the office of orientation. i assign and distribute the COM pre-frosh into their respective sessions and groups for academic orientation, and do other menial tasks that the staff at COM need me to do prior to session.

along with being the COM liason, i am also in charge of parent and faculty nametags for parent orientation. see, parent orientation is an independent program that runs concurrently to academic orientation....in simple terms, we keep the parents away from their students while they register for classes. the parents sit in a nice, air conditioned ballroom all day and listen to different representatives of different offices and services on campus speak about what they do for the students and their families at boston university. okay, so back to the nametags....every week, i'm in charge of printing and placing the parent nametags in their plastic nametag holders. we don't just give the parents peel-off nametags, we give them nametags in plastic holders....parents: they're the ones paying, so we've got to take care of them, right? anywho, at first i thought it was a really simple task....get the list of parents attending each session, print the nametags out, and put them in their holders....so very very simple. after they're printed out, we have to color-code the stickers according to which school or college the student is enrolled. then we have to tear them apart and place them in the holders. the sticker part is a lot of fun, but after that, it takes patience and persistence to get the last, but longest part of the job done: tearing them apart and placing them in the plastic holders. we've had about 500-600 parents per session in the first three sessions, but next week, in session four, we're expecting about 700 parents. 700. no joke. i always have other PA's helping me do this every week, but i'm not sure if they want to stick around and do 700 of these. i don't blame them. it's a tedious task. but someone's got to do it. and i'm glad it's me. it's a great no-brainer after a long week of phone calls and data entry.

....okay, time to get out of the office and go play ultimate. more later, i promise.

-me : )