Exhausted and Exhilarated – Pooped Out and Pumped Up!

We’ve not even completed a full week of class and many of us are already looking forward to fall break. Last week many teams and organizations returned early to campus for a time of training, orientation, and practice in order to ready for the new year, and it was a time of intense planning and preparation.

I have been fortunate to participate in two such programs. The first was the 6th Annual John G. Eccles Leadership Summit, named for our beloved Dean of Students. Student leaders from groups as diverse as Residence Life, Enrollment Student Ambassadors, Student Judicial Board, and the Bonner Leader Program came together and crossed their usual organizational boundaries in order to work collectively on a variety of engaging and interactive activities. As mosaics were created, we learned the value of partnerships. As Jenga blocks were carefully dismantled, we had frank conversations about the need to dismantle prejudice, bias, and discrimination. As teams competed with one another to create structures that would safely launch eggs from the balcony of Hall Campus Center to the plaza below, we learned the importance of teamwork, communication, and problem solving. A final activity was to have various teams brainstorm and strategize ways to increase school spirit on campus, and thus was born the current campaign: “On Friday we wear RED!”

Following the Summit, the current Bonner Leader students had their own time of orientation. Three senior interns carefully planned exercises and activities that would be both challenging and fun. Students explored their own downtown community by competing in a creative scavenger hunt. The beauty of our own Claytor Nature Study Center was enjoyed as we held our annual Bonner Olympics, shared special stories around a campfire, ate s’mores, slept outside on the porch (quick disclaimer, I slept on a real bed in the eco-village lodge), cooked-out, and returned to campus to help move in our newest Hornets. We also traveled to visit the New Community Project in Harrisonburg, Virginia, a sustainable living homestead that combines organic gardening and programs to undo global warming, with outreach to those at the margins of the community. We left with a promise to return over fall break to assist them in their efforts.

Many faculty and staff, coaches and advisors have had similar experiences the last couple weeks, and we know that odd but very real combination of being completely exhausted at day’s end but exhilarated once again by the energy and Hornet buzz that accompanies every new year at Lynchburg College. So if you find yourself pooped out right now, I hope you can balance that with a sense of being pumped up also at the promise and potential, the opportunities and the options, the privilege and the blessing of being a member of the Lynchburg College family. Welcome to the New Year!

Peace, Anne