The culmination of too many sleepless nights and too much circular discussion and too great a level of stress was an amazing retreat this past weekend. The week before last, my fellow advisors and I read through hundreds upon hundreds of Emerging Leaders applications, narrowing the pool to hundreds of applicants whom we then invited for interviews. Tuesday and Wednesday of last week were the hundreds of interviews, hundreds of asking the same questions and generally hearing the same answers, hundreds of striving to look pleasant while dying on the inside because it's 11 o'clock and you still haven't eaten supper. Then came the discussions, the talking over of every single candidate, trying to decipher between those who would be a good fit for EL and those who would be a perfect fit for EL. And then came the decisions, anxiously waiting to hear back if the people we loved loved us, and once we did hear back, frantically trying to pull everything together for the retreat. But we did it, and we did it with smiles on our faces. And we have the neatest group of 41 freshmen this world has ever seen. I am so blessed to have been a part of this weekend - being a part of taking so many strangers and watching them grow into friends through the playing of silly games and telling of embarrassing stories and roasting of marshmallows and unification of alternately laughing at and scratching heads over ridiculous advisor antics.
Ever since, though, I've been paranoid that I'll forget the faces of my 41 new besties. So, when someone I didn't recognize waved in my general direction today, I gave him a big smile and waved back. Turns out he was waving to the person walking beside me. Good thing embarrassment was overshadowed by the relief that I wasn't actually supposed to know him.
And I'm partially caught up on sleep since I celebrated the sweet, sweet victory of winning the first SSA/MLD intramural sand volleyball game with 12+ uninterrupted hours of shut-eye.
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