Friday Jambalaya
It’s the end of the week, and I am sharing a variety of odds and ends, jambalaya style.
Move-in began today for new students participating in certain Pre-Orientation programs. Two items of note: first, a message went out to all Wilderness to Wake Pre-Orientation participants around midday today. Wilderness to Wake will still take place with a revised format. We must adapt the program to be campus-based, rather than 2.5 hours away from campus, because of COVID-19 infection within our group leaders. This change is to ensure the safety of all participants as well as the group leaders. You can read the full message here.
Second, a reminder that pets are not allowed in residence halls unless they are a University-approved support animal. We encourage you not to bring pets during move-in.
For P’26s with students who will be moving in to Bostwick or Johnson, my friends from Residence Life and Housing shared these pictures of the room renovations. If, like me, you are an alumni reader who lived in Bostwick or Johnson (as I did), you will be stunned to see the single tiny closet gone, and the addition of a sink. My first thought was “What luxury our students are living in, compared to 1988-89, when I was there” 😉
Our ’26 students got a message this morning about New Deac Week (and many other things). And since it is the start of the new academic year, all undergraduate students were sent the WFU Should Know weekly e-newsletter yesterday afternoon.
Some of you have asked when the full Family Weekend schedule will be released. I am told it is likely we may have a fuller picture of the schedule by the end of next week, so I would beg your patience until then. There are many, many moving parts being worked through as we speak.
Do you follow wfuniversity on Instagram (its our official University account)? If not, you should! Our excellent social media manager ran a story yesterday asking alumni to give advice to incoming first year students – and there was lots of great wisdom (and a few funnies) shared. You can click on the picture to see what our alumni said. 
In other good social media finds, one of my excellent colleagues, Allison McWilliams, Assistant Vice President for Mentoring and Alumni Personal and Career Development, shared a great profile of another excellent colleague, Cindy Gendrich of Theatre. One of the things I like most about this profile is they talk about how to ‘find your people’ – which is something that most of our students do – or redo – every fall when school starts. Lots of good advice here.
And speaking of theatre, this popped up on my social media feed the other day, and I thought it was worth a share. It’s entitled Yes, You Should Major in Theatre (and a warning upfront, it has a little bit of curse words in it, scroll past if that would offend). And a little testimonial: in addition to having a family member who majored in theatre, I have many dear Wake friends who did – and all of them have thrived in life past WFU.
Remember, there are no bad majors! If your Deac likes the subject matter and enjoys the classes, they are likely to get better grades than if they majored in X just because they thought it was practical.
It’s the last weekend before new students move in. We can’t wait to see everyone on campus again!!
— by Betsy Chapman, Ph.D. (’92, MA ’94)
August 12, 2022