Nearly end of the week news
In this Issue:
- Tips for a sustainable move in
- Meal plan increase and decrease deadlines
- Built in the Dark: our new football identity
- Make sure you’re doing this in your job search
- Requests that families may make, but may not be acted upon (but for valid reasons)
It’s nearly the end of the week, and while I am sure our Summer School II students are excited for the weekend, the 10 day forecast can be summed up in three words: Hot. Hotter. Hottest.
And then we have the light at the end of the tunnel: August 1 at a mere 83 degrees. Fingers crossed that holds – or even comes a little sooner.
Now onto todays news…
Tips for a sustainable move in
My friends in the Office of Sustainability asked me to share this with families as you begin helping your students pack for moving in this fall:
“As your students prepare to move to their WFU home in just a few weeks, check out these quick tips for a sustainable move-in [click to enlarge].
As fellow Deacs, we live and breathe our values of making the world a better place for all of its inhabitants. After all, without Pro Humanitate, there’s no humanitate!”
Meal plan increase and decrease deadlines
Important deadlines are approaching regarding students’ fall meal plans:
If your student would like to decrease their meal plan for the fall semester, they must do so by August 1. After this date, changes to a lower plan will no longer be allowed.
If they’d like to increase their meal plan, they have until September 30 to make that adjustment.
For specific details on all meal plan choices, including specific meal plans and prices, you can visit Deacon Dining’s website.
Built in the Dark: our new football identity
I was fortunate to get a sneak preview of this a couple days ago and I cannot tell you how much I love it:
“Wake Forest football unveiled ‘Built in the Dark’ as the program’s new cultural identity, signaling the beginning of a bold new era under coach Jake Dickert. More than a mantra, ‘Built in the Dark’ reflects the belief that the effort no one sees creates the moments no one forgets — a mentality rooted in preparation and discipline and forged through connection. The identity aligns closely with Wake Forest’s transformational mission to prepare principled leaders through intentional effort, resilience and purpose….
‘Built in the Dark is not just a mantra — it’s who we are,’ said head coach Jake Dickert. ‘Success doesn’t happen on gameday. It happens in the early mornings, in the film room, in the weight room, in the classroom — in the hours when no one else is watching. We want players who embrace that mentality, who thrive in discomfort and adversity and are committed to sacrificing for one another. That’s the standard at Wake Forest – to deliver your B.E.S.T. each and every day to create unforgettable moments for our program and the entire Wake Forest and Winston-Salem community.”‘
Make sure you’re doing this in your job search
I saw this on news.wfu.edu and thought this might be helpful to our families with students who will soon be looking for jobs:
“It’s time to go full ‘Love Island’ on your job search. That doesn’t mean having future employers surveil your every move in hopes they’ll pick you (yikes). Think of it more like building and leaning on relationships so that a hiring manager might give your job application their vote. That approach is often more effective than expecting your résumé to do the talking for you. ‘People hire people, they don’t hire paper,’ Vice President of Personal & Career Development Andy Chan told Business Insider. ‘It’s important to try to ground your interactions with an employer in relationships,’ he added.”
Requests that families may make, but may not be acted upon (but for valid reasons)
We’ll close today with a short reflection on things families may want, but we may not act on.
Wake Forest prides itself on being a personal place, a face-to-face place, where there is warmth and community. And we do a lot of things for our students (and their parents/families) to extend hospitality and invite engagement.
But there are also some things we don’t typically do, and most often there are solid reasons not to do those things. So I thought I would go into a couple of requests that I sometimes get, and explain why that might not be the best option. (As always, the caveat is that there are exceptions to these rules, and other staff may take a different approach)
When a family reaches out to me about a difficulty their student is going through, sometimes they may ask me: “Will you ask my student to come meet with you so you can assist them?” The reality is that students rarely want to confide in an administrator if they think their parents/family members put them up to it. This can compromise the student’s trust and inhibit their honesty about the situation (particularly if they think an administrator will ‘report back’ to their family).
Instead, I tell families that I am happy to meet with students if the student requests the meeting. When a student initiates the meeting, then a) I know they want the meeting, and b) it generally offers better outcomes than from a command performance. In addition, sometimes students vent to their loved ones about an issue and the parent/family member interprets that as ‘my student wants help‘, but the student really doesn’t want help: they just needed to vent, and they want to handle things on their own. Handling it on their own is good for students’ development.
Sometimes families have asked that I text a student vs. send them an email – “my student is terrible with emails but they always look at texts,” etc. An old manager I had at my last job before Wake used to say you have to “adjust up.” Adjusting up means you have to adapt to whatever your supervisor says or adhere to the norms of an organization.
Although students may prefer texts to emails, administrators and faculty use email as the communication method of record. So students need to adjust up and check their email, even if they might prefer texts.
So if you get a no from me on these cases, it is not that I am being mean. There is some method to my madness :)