Raychel Payne: Center for Student Activities Week 1

Activities:

• Prepare for MSU's Orientation Student Organization Fair
• Construct signage and beach ball balloon arch
• Set up and tear down twice a week
• Facilitate the Orientation Student Organization Fair (x2)
• Participate in the Bulldog Bash committee meetings
• Contact local business requesting to advertise CSA events throughout the year
• Created trivia Prezi for the upcoming College Ready program
• Toured the newly updated Lee Hall facilities for Lyceum Series events
• Assisted ticket design for Lyceum Series 

 

                             (The beach ball balloon arch in the making and final product at the fair)

Reflection:

This week was very fun for me and am excited for the weeks to come working in student activities.  When I originally started pursuing student affairs positions I knew I wanted to start in housing but end up in student activities.  This experience so far has been busy with a diversity of tasks and I feel like a helpful member of the team.  The students and professionals in this office all love what they are doing and it is a great atmosphere to work in. My supervisor is great at getting me a variety of different experiences and has several things planned for me in the upcoming weeks. 

One of my favorite parts of the week were the two organization fairs for orientation.  The program takes place on the first evening of orientation for students to see what kinds of student organizations we have here at State. We set up the fairs with several categories for each booth to be organized into including: Belief, Recreation, Honors, Specialty, Fraternity & Sorority Life, Service and Cultural. This makes for an easy road map for incoming students to navigate through the many different organizations.The fairs will normally take place on the junction. Unfortunately the first organization fair was forced to enter the rain plan and move under the stadium. Weather looked like it was going to be decent for the program but within the last 15 minutes of tear down the wind and the rain came rolling in.  We almost lost most of the homemade balloon arch and all of us were soaked from head to toe. Thankfully we all worked as a team and were able to get all of our signage and the beach ball balloon arch back into the Student Activities office. Even though it was a slight disaster at the end, it was a great bonding experience for the office workers that were able to laugh about throughout the rest of the week.  The second fair of last week went right as planned and the weather was beautiful that day as well. 

                                      (The student activities office after running through the rain)

The stormy experience further enforced the concept of being an adaptable worker.  Not everything is going to go as planned but it is important to respond to the situation and help out in any way you can, even if that means getting soaked in the rain chasing after beach balls in the wind. 

I am happy to know that even though it is summer, I will be able to interact with students almost on a daily basis.  Everyday so far that I have come into the office I have seen the current Student Association President Brett Harris working on something or a student worker at the front desk. I am also very excited to be working with the graduate assistant for the College Ready program this upcoming week.  I developed a Prezi to facilitate their trivia night and will be helping to create ice breakers and activities with him soon.  

Overall this week has been great.  I was able to meet a lot of new people and experience many different functions of this office. Their is rarely a dull day in here and I am looking forward to the many more experiences in the next few weeks!