This last weekend, Student Affairs took 75 of the 90 students in the first year class to Oman for a weekend of bonding and outdoor education. All 9 Student Affairs Staff members along with another 16 faculty member (those who work primarily with first years) served as chaperons. Now, I'm used to chaperoning student trips - I've done about a half dozen of them to various destinations around the world. Usually it's me and another staff member and we're handling 10-15 students. 100 people is a new story... Somehow we managed to get through the weekend with only a couple of visa/passport issues and only a couple of students issues which for 100 people is astonishing. I guess we were only going to Oman, but still.
Two experiences defined the weekend for me... 1) an ultimate frisbee pickup game one afternoon after a day of team building and 2) the Via Ferrata we did with a smaller group of about 16 of us. Ultimate frisbee because I love coaching and I got to play on a team of completely inexperienced players, most of whom said that Ultimate was the highlight of their weekend. Via Ferrata because of the amount students were stretched beyond themselves and the significant growth I was fortuante enough to witness because of that. Many of the students on the Via Ferrata with me were afraid of heights but actually chose to do this activity because they wanted to overcome that fear. And boy did they.
Here are some pictures from the weekend (a conglomerate of all the pictures that were taken by staff): Album 1, Album 2.
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