Incoming Hawks learn how to SOAR at orientation 

Student Orientation and Registration (SOAR) is the orientation session for incoming first-year students that are new to the university. The session lasts for two days and the incoming students receive a lot of information about the university and the many resources available to them on campus. Since I’m an orientation leader, I get to help set up and facilitate these orientation sessions by leading groups of students around campus and getting them acclimated to the university.

The first SOAR session was about two weeks after the first Transfer Student Orientation (TSO) session, so the orientation leaders and I were pretty confident and excited to work the SOAR session. The group leaders are always tasked with interacting with students the whole orientation weekend, so I was ready to talk up the school and get the students excited about enrolling at UHCL.

Since I’m a group leader, my main task was leading a whole group of students throughout the day of orientation. I was excited because SOAR was a lot different from TSO right from the start. During TSO we don’t really have the opportunity to form a small group connection because the session is so large, but that wasn’t the case for SOAR.

Like TSO, the official orientation check-in was at 8 a.m., but all the orientation leaders had to show up at 7 a.m. to help set up and run through the general schedule for the day. Angie Montelongo and Tyler Hall, the orientation coordinators, told us the different schedules and rotations for various groups throughout the day, and we each ran through our individual duty sheets for the day. These sheets provided a detailed summary of the tasks that each orientation leader had to do at certain times during the day. For example, my duty sheet had me staffing the check-in table in the morning, whereas other orientation leaders were setting up projectors and PowerPoints for presentations later in the day.

After the morning welcome and opening presentations, I met and introduced myself to the group and got to know them for about an hour. Next, we went to the campus resource fair, which is where offices and student organizations were on display to show the incoming students what services they had to offer. The students then had important presentations back-to-back and before I knew it, the first day was over.

The next day, I met my group for breakfast, and they said they were excited for the day. We first went to a service project where we made dog and cat toys for local animal shelters. My whole group liked this activity, and we got to get to know each other better in the process.

We then had a bit of free time before lunch and class registration, so we decided to played a game called “Catchphrase.” The goal of the game is to get your team to guess whatever word or phrase is on the screen without actually saying the said word/phrase.

After the students signed up for classes, I led them on a tour around the school, while reassuring them that they had signed up for the right classes. Once again, the day flew by, and it was time for the students to leave. I thought that I would be nervous and have no idea how to lead my small group, but everything fell into place. I definitely felt more confident after the first day, and it was second nature by the end of the session altogether.

All in all, SOAR was definitely a great time. There was a lot more going on this time, and I’m glad that I got to lead my group and introduce them to the university. There were literally no problems and everything ran smoothly. I thought I would be overwhelmed after finishing my first SOAR session, but if anything, I’m excited for the next one.

For more information on how to become and Orientation Leader, contact Angie Montelongo at Montelongo@uhcl.edu, or call the Office of Orientation and New Student Programs at 281-283-2420.