Blog – Kirsten Greene

This little guy, the Western Yellowjacket, cooled off from the 106 degree weather by finding its way to our presentations!

This Saturday, Saint Mary’s hosted a Welcome Day for incoming freshman and families so that students and parents could get to know the campus and learn about the many wonderful opportunities available at Saint Mary’s. Since one of those wonderful opportunities is study abroad, I started my Saturday bright and early by representing the Center for International Programs at the 8:00am fair for co-curricular programs. From 11:00am to 5:00pm, I represented the CIP on a panel of five offices, and gave rotating presentations in the Intercultural Center to parents on why their students should go abroad and how the study abroad process works. Mostly I talked about the life skills that students learn while abroad and how financial aid can carry over.
As you might imagine, by the time my last round of presentations rolled around at 4:00pm, I was pretty tired. (Although feeling pretty good about the great support parents seemed to have for study abroad.) The outside temperature that day had reached a toasty 106 degrees, meaning that the air conditioning was on full blast and stepping outside felt kind of like going from the freezer straight into the oven. Parents were starting to look a little haggard and everyone was ready to call it a day.
So imagine our surprise when during one of my colleagues presentations, bees started flying out of the air vents and into the room. There is nothing like a sudden swarm of bees appearing right over the heads of parents of brand new students to compel one to speed up a panel presentation and practically shove those parents out the door. We later found out that the condensation accumulating on the outside portion of the air conditioning unit had attracted the bees, and had ended up somehow sucking the bees into the air vents and spitting them out into the Intercultural Center.
I’d like to make some sort of connection between the life skills I spent the day telling parents about and dealing with this kind of situation, but I’m not sure how prepared one can ever be for the sudden appearance of a big cloud of bees!

My first week

The Saint Mary's campus is beautiful, although pretty darn empty! — The Saint Mary’s campus is beautiful, although pretty darn empty!

I recently finished my first week of practicum at Saint Mary’s College of California. So far, things are off to a slow and relaxed start. Since spring semester just ended, many faculty are finishing up and heading out for the summer and staff are starting to take vacations. All but a few of the students are gone, which means the Center for International Programs (CIP) is pretty quiet. With the housekeeping items out of the way, I’m going to be working on creating a handbook for parents, reviewing possible changes to the Peer Mentor Program, and getting ready for the study abroad fair in the fall. Once we get closer to fall, I’m hoping to also work with Saint Mary’s international living/learning community.

While I’m ready to get working on practicum deliverables, I’m finding that everyone else in the CIP is in recoup mode after commencement and annual NAFSA. I’ve been told that for the summer, I can pretty much come and go when I want, and work as much or as little as I want (although I’ve been promised many times that this will change in the fall). Is anyone else finding themselves with a lot of time on their hands? Without any immediate deadlines for papers, presentations, or substantive posts, I’m having a bit of a hard time figuring out what to do with myself.

I think it might be time for a lawn chair, a lemonade, and some light summer reading. Moodian, anyone?