The Day After

In this Issue:

• Leadership and Character Discussion Groups
• Fall Break Hours of Operation
• Walk with Wente: Meet Christian Waugh, Professor of Psychology
• Hit the Bricks recap and impressions

It’s the day after Hit the Bricks, and while I am tired, it’s a happy tired. Yours truly managed to walk 8 miles and 19K steps yesterday, and it was pure joy to be on the Quad with all the students, faculty, and staff who were walking, and to soak up all the energy and excitement. It was too much activity for me to do a proper Five Senses post, but I share a recap and some impressions below.

Leadership and Character Discussion Groups

I was excited to get an email from one of my colleagues in the Program for Leadership and Character, announcing discussion groups that will be starting up soon:

“During the second half of the fall semester, The Program for Leadership and Character will hold three discussion groups that reflect on issues of leadership and character in relation to special topics: How to Be Perfect: Character in Pop Culture; Spirituality, Religion, and the Quest for Character; and The Rise of the Robot Lawyers? Students can learn more or fill out an Interest Form (due October 18).”

Families – particularly families of students still trying to find their place at Wake – please encourage your students to consider this. As students are looking to find friendships, kindred spirits, and to build their network, one of the absolute clutch moves is to be able to meet people and have deep, meaningful conversations where you really connect (hint: you aren’t going to have those deep conversations at a big party or when a bunch of people are drinking.) So if your Deac is looking to make connections, and – importantly – connect to matters of substance, this could be a great way to do it. Highly recommend.

Fall Break Hours of Operation

Fall Break is next week. Campus remains open, but there will be shifts in the hours of operation of various campus services and amenities.

Students who are planning to stay on campus for Fall Break should make note of this schedule now, and be sure they are planning ahead for their needs, so they are not caught by surprise that something is not open at the hour they regularly go.

Walk with Wente: Meet Christian Waugh, Professor of Psychology

President Wente invites faculty members to share their contributions and insights with the Wake Forest community by joining her on a “Walk with Wente,” a new video series. In this episode, she walks and talks with Christian Waugh, professor of psychology, about Waugh’s work in using positive emotions to regulate stress. They discuss the impact of major events, like 9/11 and COVID, and his enthusiasm for doing research with his students. 

For those of you who liked our old “Meet A Deac” feature, this will give you an introduction to a faculty member who may be part of your student’s schedule, major, or minor. Enjoy!

Hit the Bricks recap

Yesterday was Hit the Bricks, and it was a picture-perfect day: temps in maybe the mid 70s, sunny early, with clouds later to keep the temp reasonable, and lots of energy and excitement. I was on a small (but mighty!) team. We made our home base via a red camp chair next to a much larger student organization tent.

There is a wonderful photostory that captures the event in pictures, and then here are some of my impressions from the day:

Tents: the Quad was filled with colorful tents like the one in the picture above. Many of them were from student organizations, with their org names or Greek letters on them. Students showed their style within their tent – many had brought couches, big chairs, tables, coolers with cold drinks for their team, etc. I believe it was the theatre/arts tent that had an old Victorian looking pink settee and pink flamingoes, which were a nice touch.

Campus offices also had tents: I saw the President’s office, Global Programs and Studies, Campus Life, Student Employment, ZSR Library, maybe the Chaplain’s office too. That is not an all-inclusive list, just who I remember seeing. Many of those tables had free food or drink – I was especially appreciative of I believe it was Student Employment, who had ice pops they’d offer you as you passed by, lovely gesture.

There were also vendor tents – a local running store who had sneakers for sale, other places with t-shirts, ARAMARK (our dining provider on campus) had a food and drink table.

Music: the day was filled with music. There was a stage set up in front of Wait Chapel with giant speakers, and if you were walking/running by the chapel while they were playing music, you very nearly had to cover your ears because it was so loud. They also had periodic live bands, a cappella groups, and more.

Within individual tents, they also often had music playing. While I was walking with two great friends of mine, we remarked that the music style changed as you went from tent to tent.

While some people (like me) were walking with earbuds/airpods in part of the time, many were not, which is unusual for normal Wake exercise culture. But Hit the Bricks is as much about community as it is walking or running – so there were a lot of walkers who would do a few laps with friends or colleagues, catching up on what is happening in their lives and building/deeping their relationships through this shared experience. I’m pretty sure I saw two senior administrators having a walking meeting as they lapped the Quad.

Fun/recreation: for students who weren’t walking (or were on a break while others walked), there was a lot of spontaneous play in the grass of the Quad. As I took a break on my camp chair, I saw a couple young men throwing a football, making impressive spirals and great catches. These dudes could really throw well. I was impressed.

There were also impromptu kicking of a soccer ball, or students playing cornhole on the sets that were set up on the grass. It was nice just to see our students playing. They do so much work, and this was good, wholesome, recreational fun.

Student-athletes: our various sports teams were on the Quad and participating as a group. I managed to walk past our men’s basketball team and I am pretty sure one of their dudes is twice my height, because he was just about the tallest person I’ve stood next to in ages. I strongly suspect I also saw our track and field team because there were a group of incredibly slim and fast students running in black shirts and generally making the rest of us look like we were standing still 🙂 Our student-athletes are already in great shape and don’t need the exercise, but they were here to represent and to be part of this campus experience, and hats off to all of them and their coaches.

Strategy: One of the fun things to observe at Hit the Bricks each year is that while there are many teams who are out there just to participate and have a good time, there are other teams (both faculty, staff, and students) who are highly competitive and want to win.

The basic premise of Hit the Bricks is that for every lap your team makes, you scan an ID card at the checkpoint tent to get credit for a lap. If you were wearing a slightly weighted backpack, you could scan twice.

I’m an introvert nerd who likes to peoplewatch and observe, and I saw a couple of distinct strategies that our student groups were using:

• Half and quarter lap sprints: some of our highly competitive students would place themselves at points on the Quad. Their teammate would sprint a short distance – for some it was a quarter of the Quad, for some it was half, and then hand off their backpack to the next person like it was a relay race where you pass the baton. This strategy seemed to work well for some teams, because you had to go all out for a quarter or half a lap, but then you got some rest.
  
  [Aside: there was one ROTC student who I swear must be a triplet, because I’d see them at several different quarter points of the Quad, rather than at the same one all the time. They had an extremely hungry look in their eye, just waiting for the handoff and then they would run like the wind. I feel safer already knowing that they will one day be an officer in the Army.]
• The backpack toss: Those teams really looking for speed would heave their backpack forward to the next person to catch it and keep running. This was extremely impressive. Some of these students chucked their backpack probably 10-20 feet, and they did a pretty amazing job catching the packs to keep going. I was a little nervous that someone behind me was going to bean me with their pack by accident, but thankfully that never happened.

Your students: with the speed of the way some of your students were running, and the stamina they had to do this off and on for hours, I am sure they are in the best shape of their lives. And my 53 year old knees and feet and back were a bit envious of how easy it is to run like that when you are 18-22.

The money raised: through the collective efforts of our campus, we raised $301,722.22 for the Brian Piccolo Cancer Research Fund. As one who lost her mom to about 3 distinct types of cancer, I am grateful to our campus for all they did to raise this money and help fund research to help fight this terrible disease. I’m also grateful to our Office of Civic and Community Engagement and our Hit the Bricks student leaders for putting on this spectacular event.

For me, every day at Wake is a great day, because I love this place so much. But days like Hit the Bricks hit different. It was just a phenomenal day and makes you happy to be part of something bigger than yourself.