We hope you enjoyed a long Memorial Day weekend. The 3-day break ends and the first session of Summer Session begins. From this afternoon until July 3rd, we will have a small cohort of summer students here working on things like Organic Chemistry or Accounting 111 or taking (or retaking) some of their requirements.
The long weekend also ushers in a different cohort on campus – and that is faculty, staff, and administrators who join Graylyn pool for the summer. That’s one of the great perks of being an employee at Wake – the possibility to join the Graylyn pool. Membership is typically filled solely through WFU employees, and that means you get to see your colleagues and their children relaxed and having fun outside of the office. Or your kids and your colleagues’ kids having funand growing up together. At the pool, you get this great cross-section of academia who might not normally work in the same disciplines, but might get to know each other there and maybe even find ways for future interdisciplinary collaboration. Throw an equally large mix of administrators and librarians from different offices, and you have a lot of the university represented.
One of the things my office hears frequently when we have visitors on campus is that people notice the close relationships and genuine friendships between colleagues. They seem surprised that people are as congenial as they are. Unlike some other, larger institutions, our schools and departments do not feel siloed (at least not to me). We communicate, we get along with each other, we celebrate each other’s successes. Whether that comes from sharing some laughs at the pool, or talking to each other in the ZSR Starbucks or Shorty’s or at some other venue on campus, it comes. And I think it makes us better at everything we do.
The long weekend also ushers in a different cohort on campus – and that is faculty, staff, and administrators who join Graylyn pool for the summer. That’s one of the great perks of being an employee at Wake – the possibility to join the Graylyn pool. Membership is typically filled solely through WFU employees, and that means you get to see your colleagues and their children relaxed and having fun outside of the office. Or your kids and your colleagues’ kids having fun and growing up together. At the pool, you get this great cross-section of academia who might not normally work in the same disciplines, but might get to know each other there and maybe even find ways for future interdisciplinary collaboration. Throw an equally large mix of administrators and librarians from different offices, and you have a lot of the university represented.