Move-In Day, RA Training and Ultimate Frisbee
This was written in Fall of 2008 during my first RA training session.
Last week was the first week of training, but so far every week has been so jam-packed with meetings, events, retreats, and discussions, and my nights are filled with either group activities or floor planning, but I’ve had such an incredible experience the past several days working with and getting to know so many different people. I’m excited for this year to really get under way.
I’ll hit the highlights of training – namely the Ashland retreat, morning and nights spent playing ultimate frisbee, and various new responsibilities that have been placed my lap.
Last Wednesday night, about twenty of us found the energy after that day’s training to go play capture the flag in the Common for an hour. We split up into two dorm teams – Piano Row and the Little Building. My team (P. Row) lost even with us cheating, so it doesn’t look like bending the rules did us much good. We put up a good fight, though; Eric and I defended our flag and the jail from about five attackers, one of which was Billy (who runs like a freaking cheetah). Once that was over we decided to play some ultimate Frisbee. A couple people decided to pack it in, but we had enough people to have a team of seven and a team of eight. It ended up being a great match; I took a few spills going for the Frisbee and trying to block, and both teams were neck and neck the whole time until the match ended all tied up, six to six. Right as I threw the Frisbee maintenance shut off the lights on the entire field (which ended up working out fine since I’d just made a terrible pass). Taking the hint, we all vacated the premises and returned to our dorm rooms.
Thursday signaled the RA retreat in Ashland, MA where we’d all depart on a bus and perform various teambuilding activities. The bus ride was only about forty-five minutes long and the compound we arrived at was beautiful. It was two hundred and twenty acres large, with a sizable reservoir right behind the row of cabins that we all stayed in for the night.
We got off the bus and carried all of our belongings into one of the main buildings. The doorway we entered opened up into a large conference room. We took our seats as we listened to our activity leader explain a bit about the area we were in and the team-builders we had planned for that day. We were told we’d be outside the majority of the day and a few people went to change into something that wasn’t pants (which most of us were wearing). I already had a green shirt on, and the only pair of shorts I brought with me was my green basketball shorts. It sucks I had to look like a turtle all day, but I changed and made my way back to the meeting room.
Everyone was told to gather outside for our first activity. We grouped up in a relatively flat, grassy area a short distance from the main building and were given our first task: pick up a playing card from the ground and hold it to your chest without looking at it, then on the count of three put our playing cards face up on our forehead so we couldn’t see them and organize ourselves from two through ace. We also weren’t allowed to talk through all of this.
We were split up into two even teams and given a couple minutes to strategize. Initially we designated three people to organize everyone and have each person in charge of one group of cards (lower, middle, and upper). That worked decently and we had many more chances to improve on our time and tweak our strategy, but we didn’t know we were allowed to hold up fingers and communicate that way. The other group was aware of this, so the entire time we were competing with them we were working at a real disadvantage. We still managed to win one of the rounds though, so shpsh!
Once both groups had their times down to about forty two seconds we were told we had to come together as one large group again and perform the same task, essentially with twice the amount of people, in a much less amount of time. We were told to try and meet a goal of thirty seconds, which caused a bit of excitement and shock among the group. We tried doing it dozens of ways, and people were starting to get visibly frustrated with each other at some points. Initially we decided to split up into two groups anyway and line up behind each other. Once both groups were organized, they would combine and form a completed set. It ended up taking us over a minute and we immediately worked on revising our strategy.
After a ton of revisions, we managed to get our time down to twelve seconds. We set up shoes in one long row, each signifying a number or face card, then paired up and told our partner their number using their hands. For jack, queen, king, and ace we touched our chin, nose, forehead and head respectively. It took a few tries but once everyone remained focused and intent on accomplishing the objective we had it in the bag. Quote of the day goes to Kelly, during strategizing time: “We don’t need to change anything, everyone just needs to get it together and stop screwing up.”
Following that activity we were all split up into three groups and for the rest of the day forced to accomplish various tasks often under strict guidelines. The first activity involved transporting a bucket of water to a central area using only the materials provided, which were several strands of rope, some rubber tubing, a piece of a foam noodle and a flipper. In addition, there was a circle five feet in diameter from the bucket we were attempting to transport that we weren’t allowed to step in. Most of us figured out fairly quickly we’d need to “lasso” the bucket and use the tension from four people tugging on two ropes stationed opposite one another to pick up the bucket and move it to its location. We also slipped the rope through the rubber tubing in order to get some traction on the bucket while in transit. We accomplished the task with eight seconds to spare! The energy was pretty high at the end; it was a lot of fun.
Our second task involved moving our entire group across a field using puzzle pieces as stepping stones. The catch was someone must remain in contact with one of the pieces at all times, otherwise that piece is lost and unable to be used again. It was a pretty long process, as each block had to be laid one at a time and each person could only move one block at a time. Also, there was an equal number of blocks and people, meaning once everyone was out on a block, the person in the back had to squeeze onto a block with the person in front of him, pick up the block he was stepping on earlier (making sure to keep touching it) and pass it up to the front so the whole team could progress. We split up into three groups so we could get across quicker, but my group lost about four blocks through the course of the game; we had to have our other group members hang a U-turn and help us out. It was a pretty great experience.
Our final task was to arrange a set of pictures in the exact order they go in, having only sixty seconds to look at the picture and five minutes for everyone to briefly state what their picture was of. After that, there was another round of looking at pictures, a second, shorter round of information sharing, then it was time to put the pictures in order using only the descriptions we all gave each other. Our group did really well in that activity and got everything in the right order on the first go.
The rest of the day was used for more teambuilding activities. We regrouped with everyone and watched the original Horton Hears a Who, then broke into our upper and lower building groups. I went with Piano Row uppers, floors nine through fourteen, and we sat down inside a cabin and had just an incredible time bonding and talking with each other. There was a list of thirty questions we went through as a group, ranging from wanting to know your favorite day of the week to asking who or what you would die for. For each question we all went around and gave our answer. There were some really serious periods of time, a couple tissue box moments, and tons and tons of laughter. The feeling after the questions were over was pretty indescribable, but a feel of intense respect and admiration for everyone in the group are two things that definitely came to mind.
Once the bonding period was over we transitioned to the campfire in the middle of the field, where some of the other staff groups were already seated. We all had a blast snacking on pretzels, candy and chocolate, roasting marshmallows, talking with each other and sharing stories until someone from the compound had to come over and put out the fire. After that we dispersed to our cabins, where we stayed up until four in the morning playing gin.
There’s more to write about, but it’s late and I’ve rambled on for way too long in this entry. Suffice it to say that I’ve had the most incredible time getting to know everyone here on staff, and I’m extremely grateful that I get to work every day with the people that I do.
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