Welcome Week brought us students a variety of speakers, with the goal of getting us to branch out and meet new people and to help us transition into college life. We new freshmen would walk around with specific groups led by TALONS and travel to these events called “Passport Events” together.
Troy Stende, an international speaker, came to the university on move in day, August 28th, and I specifically went to the last session at around 7 P.M in the campus center event room. Once we swiped our ID’s, we were led into the event room and were met with other freshmen, TALONS, and RA’s dancing line dances on the dance floor. One could feel the hype building up for this speaker to come in. After a few minutes of people dancing and people talking on the sides of the event room, we were directed to have a seat on the floor, and the moans and groans of 18 year old college freshmen could be heard echoing around the room.
Once everyone got settled, Troy Stende was introduced, and his energy could really be felt. It was impossible to not be captivated by his speaking skills. He spoke about leadership and building connections with others, and to build these connections, he had us perform a few icebreakers. One of these icebreakers involved us going around to talk to people we have never met before and finding out four things we had in common. This was to be done four times, and our first partner was our high five partner, our second partner was our low five partner, our third partner was our knee to knee partner, and our fourth partner was our toe to toe partner. This was to help us build connections with others, and I still regularly speak to both my low five partner and my knee to knee partner.
We also did another icebreaker where we ended up separating into a large group of about eight to ten people and sitting in a circle and asking each other questions about our interests and how we feel about the school. I met one of my now closest friends in college through this circle icebreaker, which is great because Stende referred to the circle as our “family.” Stende had us play a game with our family to help strengthen our connection by making us work together to find various objects around the room. It really made us work together as a group and helped with leadership because there was always one specific person in charge of telling the group what the objects were and they were also in charge of bringing these objects back to the front of the room. This activity was particularly fun since one could see everyone trying to not get frustrated when they couldn’t find something.
This event with speaker Troy Stende was actually really great and helped create new friendships, which I am thankful for because I now have two good friends and one friend that I am particularly close with now. I’m sure that he will be back next year for the next class of incoming freshmen, and that new friendships and connections will be established through his event.