Orientation (aka Camp Anderson)

Section A group shot on Game Day

So I had actually started this post a long time ago but hadn't gotten around to finishing it and then publishing it.

80s party pre-party

I have no idea how it compares to other business schools, but orientation at UCLA Anderson definitely was an interesting experience.  It was a bit of a marathon, lasting 2 and a half weeks with every day spanning from 8-5, and several days lasting a few hours longer into the evening. Amongst other activities, the orientation included icebreakers,  role-playing activities, computer simulations, presentations with Legos, section chant preparations, improv lessons, outdoors adventures, a Section Cup competition including a full day of outdoor games, a luau with lots of pie throwing, skits performances, teaching elementary school children about finances, beach days, free breakfast and lunches, and finally an 80s themed party.  Especially as we started to think about former coworkers who were slaving away in a cubicle while we played dodgeball, trying to win the coveted Section Cup, we wondered are we preparing for business school right now or are we at summer camp?

There is definitely something unusual about a group of 370 adults performing all the aforementioned activities, but oddly I think it all actually accomplished what the school intended it to.  Once the fall quarter starts we will mostly only be exposed to our section (the class is divided into 5 sections of approximately 75 students each who we take all of our fall classes with), so the mix of activities in orientation was a good way to build up section pride but also interact with students in other sections.  Every day's lunch had a different seating assignment to purposely mix us with different classmates, so that we had shared a meal with a large portion of the class by the end of the 2.5 weeks.  The other goal was to get us used to group work and to try to get us more comfortable when working out of our comfort zone (if that makes sense), and through plenty of activities that put us in the spotlight, I think it helped accomplish that too.

I really want to summarize the list of activities that I mentioned in the opening paragraph, but that would take way too much time and space, so I'll just add a few additional details to a couple of the highlights:

Odyssey - This was the outdoors adventure day.  One activity involved climbing up a narrow 3 story pole.  Climbing was easy, but pulling ourselves up to stand on top of it was really difficult.  Once at the top, we had to rotate 180 degrees on this rickety pole with nothing to hold on to and then finally jump off of it on to a trapeze suspended  above the ground.  Yes, we were harnessed in to avoid any real injury, but it was definitely a difficult and intimidating activity. 

Junior Achievement - This was our "volunteer" day where we were assigned an inner city elementary school to teach money lessons to.  Two of my classmates and I were assigned the pre-k class and we taught them about saving money.  It was actually a lot of fun and felt pretty rewarding to work with the kids.  Especially while I ran around with them (in business casual attire) during their recess period, it fondly reminded me of my old Crestwood days.

I haven't even discussed the fact that there was a 5-day, 2-credit class of Leadership Foundations mixed in here.  Our professor was actually really awesome (literally one of the funniest people I have ever met, and a great instructor as well).  Some of the group activities mentioned earlier were actually incorporated as part of this class and there was a lot of case study preparation and discussions too, which we'll be using in Anderson a lot.  Am I better leader because of it?  I'm not sure, but it was pretty fun 2.5 weeks either way.

80s party w/ one of the guys from my study group