Orientation/Swoop Camp!

When I first came to college I did not think that I would be a leader for the school, but it changed my life forever.

Orientation is how I first started off my 1st summer as an orientation leader. I met new people, new cultures, and made new friends. Orientation at any college is usually really boring and you hear the same thing over and over again, its's also mandatory. As an orientation leader my job was to make it a little more fun and more comfortable for the students being away for the first time from their family. These students were always smiling and I really didn't have a single one fuss anytime we were doing anything. There was probably 1 the whole summer that my partner and I had issues with. The picture below was only a small part of my team that I got to work with. The one in the blue polo was actually my "boss" and we were best friends in middle school and high school. It was crazy that we both ended up at the same college and still having fun together. The girl in the glasses was my orientation partner! We didn't even know each other until orientation retreat which occurred after school let out for the summer.

These 2 next to me are now 2/3 of my "bosses" that will be giving me rules to follow this upcoming Summer 2020! They have became my best friends and I work with them in the Student Engagement Office at UT Tyler. They help me plan events for my position and I help them with others things. I sometimes get to see what our trainings consist of before everyone else does because I work beside them.

The guy we are all pointing at was someone else's group and we just wanted him to know that we are so happy that he was here and having a great time. He volunteered to be in this picture and we all decided to point at him to make sure that he knows that he was the star of the show. Our students really did love and enjoy us!

The man in the back in the white polo is a very looked up to man on campus. He is vice president of operations and strategic initiatives and chief operations officer for UT Tyler. He is a very outgoing and friendly guy and he loved that he got to take a picture with us!

This was one of my groups during orientation. We had 6 orientations which meant 6 different groups of students. Every week on the last day we would have, with who's left, of our group take a picture with us just to have a little fun and let them know that we enjoyed being their leaders. Talons up!!

Now time for me to introduce Swoop Camp. The best part of the summer. This group of people changed my life for the better. We were together for a few days for a few hours a day the few days before camp started. We took this picture right after working our butts off in the hot summer sun moving our freshman students in. You can tell we were still a happy bunch of kiddos even after sweating all morning. What I didn't know in this picture is that I was about to meet a bunch of students that were going to impact my life forever.

This was my lovely group of students for the week! Our group's name was Swoops Clues, just like the show Blues Clues. This picture was taken in front of our school's trophy cases as one of our challenges. Which was to follow the riddles that were given to us and to take a picture in front of the riddle that we solved. The rules were to have everyone in the picture and then we had to post this picture to social media. We had about 10 riddles and as you can see, everyone was excited to be inside in the AC to take the picture instead of outside.

This was by far my favorite day, so that is why it was saved for last. Yes that is me in the blue wig... Our team color was blue. This was the day that everyone came together to have fun and just enjoy being there. Blue was my favorite color so I was super excited to be a part of the blue team. Everyone seemed to have bonded on this day and it made my heart happy knowing that everyone was making new friends. I asked the boys multiple times if they knew each other before coming here and all of them said "no, but we're friends now." It was just an amazing group to be a part of and that is why I am doing it again for my 2nd and final summer of my undergrad degree. I'm going to miss it like crazy!

My partner is the girl with the boa around her neck. It's crazy because I didn't really know her and she came off as shy and as soon as we heard we were partners it was hard to overcome and adapt to her at first. But after the first day of finding out we were partners we realized how similar we were and just hit it off from then on. She's really awesome and graduated last December. A year and a half earlier than when she was suppose to graduate! I'm super proud of her and it was just a totally awesome experience with her as my partner and my "Blues Clues baby" group.