FDOC (and lots to cover)
In this Issue:
- President Wente’s welcome message for the fall
- Various other messages sent to students
- Move-in videos and photos
- Transition issues for students abroad and new students
- A note on perfectionism and learning
- For P’27s: weekly messages
Edited after publication to add: you may have seen the breaking/unfolding news about an active shooter emergency at UNC Chapel Hill. While normally we have good-natured ribbing and rivalry with the Tarheels, our hearts are with them in this time of crisis. Today, we are all Carolina blue.
Happy FDOC (First Day of Classes), Daily Deacdom! While it is not a bright and sunshiny day here (instead, it’s grey and occasionally drizzly), we are still excited that classes are in session and we can all begin settling in to our fall routines.
This Daily Deac is going to be longer than usual, but we have a lot to cover. Scroll past anything you don’t need, and read what you do.
President Wente’s welcome message for the fall
President Wente sent a message to students, faculty, and staff today to welcome in the new semester and welcome everyone back to campus. You can read her full message here; I am also sharing a couple of excerpts below:
“To our newest students, welcome home. We are thrilled you have joined our learning community. Please know that your faculty, staff, and peers are here to help you find your place, belong, and thrive at Wake Forest.”
“As we enter a new semester together, I encourage each of you to:
- Embrace our community of learning: Nurture your sense of curiosity, in and out of the classroom, and in your work.
- Enrich our community of inquiry: Share the knowledge you create with each other, and engage with differing and diverse perspectives to inform your own.
- Engage our community of partnerships: Honor our commitment to the wellbeing of our local, regional, and global communities as you bring your unique strengths and talents to bear in your education, teaching, research, and professional experiences.”
Dr. Wente also shared a video message on Instagram.
Various other messages sent to students
At the start of the semester, there are always a lot of messages to share. Here’s a recap of the ones I know about:
- Living and Learning in The Forest – this message went to all new students, and reinforces the many layers of support available to them in their residential communities, via their academic advisers, Faculty Fellows, and more. We also forwarded this to P’27 families.
- Letters So Dear – this message went to all new students sharing advice from upperclass students and young alumni
- Occupancy verification and upcoming inspections – the Office of Residence Life and Housing shared procedural information with resident students
And I am going to steal a line from my Residence Life and Housing colleagues’ letter. To the degree you can stress this to your students, the better positioned your Deacs will be to be successful: “As a pro tip, please read your emails carefully and in their entirety. Sometimes they’ll contain a lot of information, but we promise that it will always be important; as is this one.”
Move-in videos and photos
My very talented colleagues who work with social media have a lot of great content on the wfuniversity Instagram account. If you have not followed them yet, you ought to do so.
They had a video highlighting move-in for the ’27s, which you can see here. They also did one on the many dads of move-in (I know which one my dad was!). Thanks to all our Deac dads for being good sports 🙂 Our official wfuniversity Instagram account also has some great pics from a variety of Orientation activities. It’s good stuff y’all.
Transition issues for students abroad and new students
Finding a friend group and feeling acclimated in a new environment are critical parts of students’ adjustment to college. While we think of this as a first-year student issue, I was reminded that it college students have other transitions too, including going abroad.
Several years ago, I had the pleasure of getting an email from a former advisee while she was abroad her fall junior year. She shared a wise perspective on the discomfort of the first semester in college or the start of a semester in a foreign country:
“In the vein of freshmen who are having trouble acclimating, last night I called one of my Wake friends who is also studying abroad, and we both said the first couple weeks have felt a lot like freshman year. So in that sense, I think the process of self-discovery is ongoing for those who seek new environments – perhaps not the most comforting message for freshmen who are struggling, but true nonetheless.
Two pieces of advice that come to mind are that 1) first semester is hard for everyone, even friends from home whose social media says otherwise, and 2) students just have to keep putting themselves out there, which I appreciate can be really hard. Joining clubs, raising your hand in class, doing things with your hall are all great places to start! I remember feeling awkward asking to join in on plans, but the positive response I received when I put myself out there at Wake encouraged me to make plans and include as many people as possible here in my new environment!
I’ll share a funny story from when we dropped off my brother for his freshman year. My parents and I attended the family orientation, where the provost explained that students will call home with all sorts of reactions, one of which is that everyone else has made best friends for the rest of their life and there is no one left for them to be friends with. Obviously this is not the case, but the hyperbole was all the more humorous because I knew that I had called home with similar worries just two years prior. In fact, I called home with nearly every anxiety the provost mentioned that day.
If anything, just admitting that the transition is hard is a great first step, and I think that if students are brave enough to share their anxieties, they will be shocked how many people will respond, “Oh my gosh, I thought I was the only one.” It took me about a year and half to come to that realization at Wake, and it gave me the courage to come out and say it from the get go here.
I viscerally remember the first six weeks, so I feel for my fellow Deacs who are experiencing those same growing pains. Bottom line is it WILL get better, I promise, and they will be shocked where they find themselves in two years.”
So if you are a P’25 with a Deac abroad who feels a bit shaky at first, or a P’27 with a new student who feels unsettled, know that this is normal and it gets better with time, and effort to get involved.
A note on perfectionism and learning
At the start of the semester, I want to share some advice about perfectionism, which is something with which many a Wake student struggles. This was shared on social media by one of my dearest Wake friends and former roommate, who has given me permission to share it here. Her message is solid. She wrote:
“I sent a version of this email to a student today. It’s been a VERY LONG semester. I think somehow I was writing this to myself. And a lot of other people. Here goes:
‘Stop trying to be flawless and perfect in your work. I have been teaching at the college level for a very long time, and it is rare that I ever find a student who has submitted flawless work from tip to tail. And that is good. If we strive for perfection in every part of our work, we will drive ourselves batty. Yes, we want to do our best. But our ‘best’ work does not mean ‘flawless’ or ‘perfect.’ In fact, it is in the errors that we grow.
If you are afraid of flaws and errors, you are going to be very unlikely to find spaces to learn and grow. I teach developmental psychology, which is all about change. Most of the changes I teach about have been borne out of flawed, incomplete, or evolving systems: children start out egocentric but grow to rethink their egocentrism; they rethink how they describe themselves as they grow up; they reshape how they conceive of friendships, etc.
If you only focus on getting perfect work, you not only burn yourself out, you don’t offer yourself any grace in the flaws. And there is much to be learned there.” — Dr. Jennifer Slawinski Blessing (’92, MA ’94)
For P’27s: weekly messages
Our P’27s and transfer families got used to hearing from me every Tuesday this summer with an email with that week’s info. During the fall semester, we no longer email you that directly, but I do write a weekly message that publishes each Monday, which I will link to in the Daily Deac.
We had some tech hiccups, so the messages I’d scheduled to be posted in previous weeks didn’t show up until this past Friday. You can access them all here, but since August 14 and 21 have passed, I’d only focus you on the August 28 message.
If you made it all the way through today’s blog, you get a gold star for the day! I know it was a lot 🙂