August
23, 2010
Welcome
back to school. If you are a freshman, I hope the excitement never wears off,
but the nervousness definitely will. If you are returning to school, you have a
great opportunity to have a meaningful and powerful impact on an incoming
freshman. Offer a hand, carry a load, ask if they need help finding their way
around. Offer to be a resource to get connected. It may never mean more than
during the first week of classes.
If
you are staff of faculty, you have been down this road for a lot of years and
it is easy to forget how big a transition this is. In many ways, your reaching
out with a kind gesture is a better offer of community than that coming from a
fellow student because you represent the new extended community of young adults
away from home for the first time.
Yes,
it’s true. Students would rather connect with other students. But a very
important part of college education today is to teach/remind ourselves as well
as students that we need broader community beyond our family and closest
friends. Those who work at colleges are in the best position – and the first
week is the best of the best – to extend that hand.