HPAC Training & New Student Orientation

HPAC training started two weeks ago and lasted a week. Then came the real fun: new student orientation (NSO). HPAC is my official title: head peer academic coordinator. I think the quickest way to summarize it is that my job is to "know stuff". That is, if students have questions I'm supposed to either know the answer or direct them to somebody who does. The other thing HPACs do is to provide mentoring, which is helping the student figure out what classes to take, when to take them, what major to pursue, etc.

Our training lasted about four days, each of which was eight to ten hours. The bulk of it was to learn things about the campus. We went to the various cultural community centers, student resource centers, etc. We had talks from admin folks about policies, requirements, things to be aware about regarding changes in various majors programs... We talked amongst ourselves about what it means to be a major in such-and-such, and finally we had 'practice sessions' where we consider a scenario of a student in trouble one way or another and figure out what kinds of things should happen to best help this student.

The training was fairly interesting, even if most of it was somewhat irrelevant to me personally. Escondido Village, where I'm HPACcing, is a fairly independent community and people generally know what they're doing, what they need to do, and if not know where to look it up themselves. There is no dorm environment or community, so people tend to behave very differently. It's like an actual village, of sorts, where people are all off in their apartment buildings doing their own things and living their own lives. Those that are active socially tend to already have a network of friends from their time in the dorms, and so will focus there and not in EV. In any case, my role is fairly minor and so most of the training probably wouldn't directly apply to me.

This year we have two new students, both transfers. We were supposed to have a freshman as well, but she must have broken up with her boyfriend/partner at the last minute because now she's in FroSoCo (Freshman-Sophomore College, a dorm on campus with (guess what) Freshmen and Sophomores). We have about 100 students, but I'm not sure how many are new to EV and how many have lived here before.

I was a little miffed about losing my freshman, and since I wanted to get at least some experience with freshmen I volunteered to replace a peer mentor (PM) who had to cancel at the last minute. Peer mentors are sort of like HPACs in that they're supposed to "know stuff" to help freshmen get through their early times. PMs are very variable in that some are very good and some are, well, less good. It's interesting that many of the PMs in my group - I'm in the Donner dorm group, where all my mentees live - said their main motivation was to do a better job with their mentees than their mentor did with them.

So there I am, a paid HPAC with almost nothing to do and a volunteer peer mentor with eight freshmen to take care of.

Getting ready for the freshmen was one of the busiest times I've had so far. We had to do all kinds of things, such as decorating dorms (which I volunteered for with my PM hat on - EV doesn't have a dorm to decorate) and stuffing packets. The packet stuffing was pretty 'interesting' - it was basically taking bulletins, time schedules and various papers and putting them into envelopes. Now, that doesn't sound too bad, until you realize that there are 1,650 incoming freshmen and about 25 of us. (There are more HPACs, but not all of them decided to show up and help. Bleh!) We lined up assembly-line style and got to it. My job was to refill piles that were going low. That wasn't so bad, but it did mean that I spent most of the evening moving boxes around. Some of those boxes contained yearbooks and bulletins and are darn heavy. If I see any freshman throwing away a bulletin I'll whap them over the head with it. :-)

Then on Tuesday, September 20th, the world blew up. Except for a few early arrivals (e.g. athletes whose season had begun or other special needs students), about 1,500 freshmen showed up along with about 3,000 parents & relatives & people. Now, with freshmen come suitcases and boxes and bags and stuff and more stuff, and of course this all has to get from the car into the room. I don't know how things happen at other universities, but we (mentoring staff) were enlisted to move boxes around. We were given I-HAUL t-shirts (a play on U-HAUL truck rentals) to wear, with "Can I carry that?" printed on the back. (I didn't actually get one, since the girl I was replacing was size small and nothing my size was ordered...)

So I spent about 6 hours on Tuesday, from about 7 am till 3 pm with a lunch break in there, moving stuff around. The parents and arrivals seemed to really appreciate it, which was nice. I met my mentees as well. It must be kind of creepy to have some random dude show up and know your name. But, it must be kind of nice as well. (We were given pictures of our mentees so that we could get to know them.)

I tracked down my cousin Graham (well, not first cousin, but something like that), said hello and had lunch with him and his parents. They all seem very excited that he's at Stanford, and he definitely has some interesting times ahead of him. He lives in Larkin, which is actually right next door to Donner, and since I'll be spending time in Donner with my mentees I'm guessing I'll run into him fairly often.

On Wednesday we had an advising lunch, which was basically my eight mentees eating with me and asking questions. We went over basic stuff like general education requirements, classes to take, etc. That was mainly preparation for their meetings on Thursday with their academic advisor, Linda Paulson, and myself. Basically, every freshman has:
- a peer mentor who only has a small group of mentees (6 to 10);
- an academic advisor who only has a small group of advisees (one or two PM's worth);
- and their in-dorm staff, e.g. their HPAC, resident faculty/fellow, resident assistants, etc.;
so, they really have quite a lot of support. In my cases, my mentees have their normal HPAC, their PM/HPAC (so they get two HPACs! Whee) and their academic advisor, who happens to be their resident fellow.

They're a really interesting bunch of people and it's very exciting to help them discover Stanford. Most of them are primarily interested in the humanities, but I have a few who are interested in psychology or even medicine. We'll have to see how that turns out - so many minds change so many times in the first year or so at Stanford. And one of them is a varsity fencer, which sounds like good fun.

Anyhoo, that's that. I'll be keeping in touch with my mentees throughout this year (or longer if they want), and I'll see how much the EV crowd wants my help. It'd be nice to form some kind of community, but that's probably rather unrealistic... We tried last year (I was on staff as well, as a community associate) and it didn't really work. Oh well!

Posted on 10/01/05 at 13:14:25 by dchaley .
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