Happy New Year, welcome to spring semester, and here’s to our inaugural blog post.
For our devoted passive readers of the FYE-News email you received on a weekly basis from First Year Experience, this blog is our new (and improved!) way of sharing information with you.
If you never realized you were getting a weekly FYE-News email full of insightful, life-altering information, believe me when I say that this is better. Here’s why:
FYE is an office of people. We are a staff of seven professionals, one office manager, and two incredible graduate students. A weekly email doesn’t care about you, doesn’t have feelings or opinions, and will never tell you a bad joke…but we do. (How do you make a tissue dance? You put a little boogie in it). Through this blog, you’ll get to know us, as we hope to get to know you. You’ll come to realize that the staff in First Year Experience are invested in the success of first-year students, and we have knowledge to share, advice to dispense, and candy bowls in our office cubicles.
Students helping students. Over 200 upper-class student leaders devote time and energy to supporting and mentoring new students each year. You see them at Orientation, at Convocation, in the classroom, and at many events and programs coordinated by FYE throughout your first year. These students have experience in what you may be experiencing:
- They fail midterms
- They’re homesick
- They struggle with time management
- They ignore the recommendations for maintaining a healthy lifestyle
- They have their hearts broken.
But, they persevere. They learn a lesson (or two). They have tremendous success. They’ll share their stories with you in this blog, and you can learn a lesson (or two) from their experiences.
Real time. Real talk. A formatted weekly email is typically drafted, edited, and scheduled to go out 4-5 days before it hits inboxes (true story). A blog lets us be timely and relevant with our thoughts and ideas when something BIG happens on campus. And you, in turn, can share with us your comments about those (or other) thoughts and ideas.
This thing called the Internet. Ohio State makes u.osu.edu accessible to students, faculty, and staff anytime, anywhere (with Internet access) from laptops, desktops, portable devices. You can comment on a post at three in the morning when I’m sleeping (wait, you should also be sleeping…see recommendations for maintaining a healthy lifestyle), and each of our blog contributors can create posts through their own preferred method of submission.
Comments on comments on comments. We want to hear from you. We want you to talk to each other. This is a public forum, but it’s also a safe space…we hope that you’ll engage in respectful and reflective ways.
Stuff you care about. Let’s say we have a blog post about living in Columbus and taking advantage of all this city has to offer (spoiler alert: it’s happening). You grew up in Columbus, and you could practically write that post in your sleep…with your toes…while playing the accordion. (How’s that mental image working out for you?) Okay, so that blog post probably won’t be interesting, but you can search this blog for terms, categories, or tags about things you would find interesting. And, if you’re coming up empty, shoot us a comment and we’ll dedicate our next post to you.
Memes. GIFs. YouTube. Soundcloud. Oh, the media frenzy! We get it: Buzzfeed is awesome. We like it, too. They’ve got a good thing going, and we’re not ashamed to say that we’re going to try to emulate its approach to sharing information…to an extent. I’m calling it now: we’ll probably never post anything like 22 Lies Disney Told About Hair.
I will, however, include this music video of my favorite song from 1996 (the year I started college at Ohio State):
Look back, plan ahead. I kept a diary in elementary school. The steamiest entry was circa February 1988, when I was in fourth grade and the boy I had a crush on picked me to play the tambourine next in music class. Irrelevant is the fact that our teacher told him he had to pick a girl and that I was one of only two girls left who hadn’t been picked; the point is, I was convinced that I was going to have an extra special Valentine in my cardboard box the following week (nope, didn’t happen).
This blog can be your elementary school diary. Read through these posts in May and remember where you were at this moment, how you felt about beginning your second semester at Ohio State. Think about how you’re different now compared to when you started here in August. Use these posts to jar your memory, to help you set goals for the future, and have a snapshot of one of the most transforming years of your life.
Until next time…