And so it begins

My favorite time of the year has begun. From now until the end of summer there will be orientation sessions for new and transfer students three times a week. It can be amusing watching parents and kids roam around aimlessly as they try to walk and peruse a campus map at the same time. Once last summer I took a campus bus down to the middle of campus to grab some lunch. Some of my fellow passengers were parents there for orientation. I was wearing my office keys around my neck on a lanyard which bears the logo and web addy for the particular school that I work for. As I enjoyed the bus ride, I watched as a couple attempted to decipher a campus map and find where a building was. Despite bearing something very visible upon my person that denoted that I worked on campus, they never asked me for assistance. Granted, I never offered either. I could've told them where the building was, which bus stop to get off at, even which bus route to take to get back to where they had been. C'est la vie.

For me, orientation means one thing: the Red Bags. Each new incoming student gets a bag full of stuff, and not just the usual crappy fliers for campus housing and dining plans or magazine order forms. That's the kind of stuff I got at my orientation (which was a complete waste of my time) to college last decade. No, these new kids get decent stuff like cups, t-shirts, penlights, etc. My guess is that the university is trying to start buttering up students and their parents now for the inevitable "sales pitch" later on for their ongoing fundraising campaigns. I haven't seen the contents for this year's red bags, but considering that budgets on campus have been a little better this year than in the past few, I'm sure that there's some worthwhile cushy stuff in them. And as there was an orientation today, please forgive me as I run downstairs to see if anyone has left one of their bags behind. If there's a cup in them this year, you can have it as I've enough already.