The Hiatus

It is an all-consuming, all-incompassing, all-hands-on-deck event on our campus.  Everyone pitches in for it.  Everyone.  Every department on campus is either represented in some way or plays a critical role in preparing for or presenting it.  Every facility is referenced or used during it.  It is truly a team effort.  It is the 2010 summer orientation program.  And now, "it" is over!  The last of four sessions finished Tuesday of this week at Meridian Community College.  Now, for about three days we can all exhale....

For the rest of the week, we are on a hiatus of sorts.  We will spend the rest of week not thinking, at all, about orientation.  Ironically enough, our post-orientation afterglow will not include recanting fun-loving antedotes about our new arrivals.  We will not speak fondly of the wide-eyed, bright-smiled, bushy-tailed freshmen who invaded our campus through late spring and all summer.  We will not share tales of how at the ninth hour MCC advisors were able to perform heroic feats by helping students create perfect fall class schedules with only a few keystrokes! We will not reflect on long lines, short treks, hot sun, and cold water bottles.

We will not reflect on our panic-stricken moments where seemingly great peril loomed because of minor technical difficulties, "brown-outs", no-shows, mis-steps, oversights, overestimations, underestimations, misdirections, mis-ques, losts, or founds.  No one will relish in the sighs of relief, smiles, the accolades, the hugs, the pats-on-the-back, the "thank-you's", the "job-well-done's", the "atta-boys" and "way-ta-go's".  We will not tally attendance, surveys, nor discuss outcomes, make projections, neither note points of improvement nor best practices.  No looking back..."We will do none of this because summer orientation is over and we are on hiatus," she said ironically.

Thank you Class of 2010!  We are excited you have chosen Meridian Community College.  Home of the Eagles!  (http://www.meridiancc.edu/) MCC is the place where you can expect us all to give you the best that we've got...