VIRTUAL WELCOME RETREAT 2020
Last winter I applied to be a welcome retreat leader for the 2020 UHP retreat in August 2020. A few things happened in between, and I ended up forcing a bunch of strangers in a Teams call to become friends. I'm not sure if we quite got there, but I learned a lot and did what we are all doing, I made the best of it. The virtual reincarnation of the Honors welcome retreat consisted of a few video meetings with incoming honors students, the first of which was so awkward. Actually, the second one was too. I think we've learned a lot about the power of technology in the months that have followed the COVID-19 outbreak, but it still hasn't made it easier to connect with people.
My first meeting consisted of me talking to my students about the various resources on campus. That's about it. In the second meeting, I made more of an attempt to facilitate conversation. I asked everyone to talk about the best and worst parts of their first week of school, and what they were looking forward to. They actually talked to each other! I was a little proud. Then about sixty days passed, and I had another meeting. The exponential decay in participants continued, and I was left with four awesome people that had a good time talking to each other, but I wished I had done more for them. Hindsight is 20/20, but what I'm really thinking about is what I can do next. I floated the idea of merging the tattered remains of several welcome retreat groups into one normal-sized group that is actually interested in making friends. I'm not quite ready to give up on this yet, but I think the real value is in what we learn from this experience. We took the most awkward part of making friends, the actual talking, and isolated it. I think if we build up from there, we can have more success in the future. I would love to be a leader again next year, and see how we can make this even better.
Last winter I applied to be a welcome retreat leader for the 2020 UHP retreat in August 2020. A few things happened in between, and I ended up forcing a bunch of strangers in a Teams call to become friends. I'm not sure if we quite got there, but I learned a lot and did what we are all doing, I made the best of it. The virtual reincarnation of the Honors welcome retreat consisted of a few video meetings with incoming honors students, the first of which was so awkward. Actually, the second one was too. I think we've learned a lot about the power of technology in the months that have followed the COVID-19 outbreak, but it still hasn't made it easier to connect with people.
My first meeting consisted of me talking to my students about the various resources on campus. That's about it. In the second meeting, I made more of an attempt to facilitate conversation. I asked everyone to talk about the best and worst parts of their first week of school, and what they were looking forward to. They actually talked to each other! I was a little proud. Then about sixty days passed, and I had another meeting. The exponential decay in participants continued, and I was left with four awesome people that had a good time talking to each other, but I wished I had done more for them. Hindsight is 20/20, but what I'm really thinking about is what I can do next. I floated the idea of merging the tattered remains of several welcome retreat groups into one normal-sized group that is actually interested in making friends. I'm not quite ready to give up on this yet, but I think the real value is in what we learn from this experience. We took the most awkward part of making friends, the actual talking, and isolated it. I think if we build up from there, we can have more success in the future. I would love to be a leader again next year, and see how we can make this even better.