NYP 2005 Freshman Orientation Day 1

Hmm.

Today is the first day of the NYP 2005 Freshman Orientation, and considering of all 37-odd OGLs, we managed to pull the first day of fairly well for the first day. Let me tell you something... and it's probably just the obvious: nothing will ever go as planned.

We had arranged for everyone to meet in school at 7am, and I guess I was the only bugger who got up early enough to reach there and realise that Block M level 6 was locked until 7:30am.

I suppose it wasn't really realistic for me to expect everyone would arrive there 7am sharp, but as the head OGL for ID and much much more.. I made the effort to do so, and I did it.

The whole thing went quite well in the morning, albeit a slight traffic jam and confusion amongst the juniors regarding their need to firstly get their student ID before lining up and then receiving their name-tag and subsequent herding towards their group.

Yeah... it's a lark managing 37 odd OGLs who have half a mind to run off and slack like nobody's business. It's even worse when you know that the state of mind of the freshmen (or freshies, as per Brian, my fellow Head OGL) depends on my mangement skills regarding the whole programme. It also includes Brian organisational skills, because he had spent three days almost without sleep, and the way it went wasn't satisfactory to him.

Apparently, Brian was disgruntled regarding the way the OGLs had taken the whole event so lightly.. arriving late... not cooperating and doing their tasks properly. Essentially, Brian wasn't happy with our some of our peers' performance today, and he even scolded some of them during our debriefing after the whole first day was over.

I don't blame Brian for his anger and frustration, because I'd know I wouldn't be anywhere near being amused if my colleagues and team mates decided to slack off and turn off their enthusiasm. Apparently, Alvin gave me some feedback regarding the two fo us.. he said that Brian was able to be cheerful, and friendly.. but his 'tough' side came out less easily.

For me.. I was able to get 'tough' quite easily, and due to my rather weak (compared to Alvin's) sense of humour, I suppose my ability to humour the freshmen wasn't exactly effective. Anyhow... Alvin was doing the NYP tour for one of the ID classes, and his incessant lame humour literally had me shaking my head in disbelief and in dispair (considering that he turns up for Orientation dressed in shorts, a polo tee and loafers... with that bowl haircut and then starts talking cock). But he was funny, by the way.

The day had started with registration (confusion, confusion), then we had moved on to Ice breakers once the numbers had settled down, but we were already 15 minutes behind schedule, no thanks to poor traffic management. After Icebreaking was done, there was a speech and introduction to the course by the respective deputy directors (ID and DMD) at seperate lecture theatres. Even our lecturers went up to do their thing, and I tried to throw in some toilet humour to keep things from straying too far from product design.

Lunch was a fun affair... after most of the freshmen had finished their lunch, they threw their lunch boxes (styrofoam containers) into a black rubbish bag, and our logistics head, Aaron tried to compress the bag, but as soon as he was halfway pressing the bag with his body, the bag gave a huge 'BOOM', and there appeared a huge tear in the side of the bag. Congrats.. Aaron.

the NYP tour was fun, but tiring..and after the teabreak... there was a video and presentation by the library staff and I practically slacked off during the whole thing.. culminating in a full body stretch behind the rear seats and falling asleep with AC/DC slamming in my ears.

I dunno... personally, even though there were some complications in the arrangements, I'd have to say that despite some bad apples, the whole thing went fairly smooth. However, morale and teamwork within the OGLs is still somewhat lacking.. our seniors said our cheer was weak, and Brian was pissed with everyone.

Sigh... just pray that everything goes well tomorrow..I have to get up at 5am again.


Cheers,

Crawldaddy