Orientation

Today we had our annual orientation for our first year students. I was very nervous about this as my two predecessors always seemed so much more organized than I ever can be. When I realized that man of them had to leave early to attend Charity's talk and I needed to introduce them at the very beginning, I decided to move the open greeting and cookie eating to a point just 10 minutes into the session instead of at the end. This way the students and profs are still fresh and more likely to have a meaningful conversation. My gut feeling is that this made it a more useful session than if I had spent more time explaining stuff.