What I Learned As An Orientation Leader in a Global Pandemic

[Music]

here’s a question

why become an orientation leader for

some

it’s because it’s a summer job that

bridges one year

to the next for others it’s because

they’re trying to

expand their leadership skills and

refine their oratory

ability and for the vanishing small

minority

it’s because they love people

but why become an orientation leader

during a global pandemic

i became an orientation leader during a

global pandemic

because i saw it as an opportunity to

encourage students during one of the

most difficult times of their lives

right before they step into one of the

most

formative periods of their lives

okay here’s another question how do you

share a message that’s important

with someone that doesn’t know you

i believe it’s a three-step cycle of

action

slowing down stopping and stepping out

in detail that looks like slowing down

to notice

stopping to listen and stepping out

to understand so

how do you slow down to notice the first

thing you do is you show people that

they are worth

slowing down for this map on the screen

behind me

is a picture of all the places from

which my students called in from

23 countries around the world

and i love this picture as a

representation of the idea that people

come into your life

from a variety of different places and

speaking metaphorically that could be

emotionally mentally socioeconomically

you pick the level of categorization

people come into your life from very

different

places so when you slow down to notice

you put your value where people put

theirs

during one of my sessions i had the

chance to meet a student that was

calling in from india

and this was her story her parents had

saved up her entire life

for her to get the opportunity to study

in the u.s

and she had tried for three years

unsuccessfully

to get a visa to come and study here in

the u.s and

finally in 2020 her visa got

approved and then the coronavirus hit

the u.s shut its borders and ice

mandated that all students on f1 visas

that were taking an online course

schedule

were barred from entry to the united

states

so now my student had this conundrum

where she had tried for so long to

realize this dream

and now it was in her grasp but

this dream that was finally in her grasp

was now being precluded

by something out of her control

i remember her telling our group how

upset she was

how she spent many nights crying and

trying to figure out what she could do

to avail herself of the situation that

she was in

and in that moment i said to her i said

i don’t have a lot of power

but i will do everything that i can

to put you in contact with

administrators to pass on resources

so that you can figure out this

situation and

realize your dream i put my value

where this student put hers and that’s

the idea

the most meaningful thing to people is

recognizing the significance

of something that is important to them

so we’ve slowed down to notice now it’s

time to stop

to listen and when you do that it’s

important to remember that it takes time

to articulate matters of the heart all

the students that came into my sessions

during the summer

came to hear me talk about how to deal

with

bratty professors or how to navigate

homework

exams having a social life in college

but i realized that in a zoom room where

all of these students were facing

all manner of hardship this presented a

unique

opportunity to give them the chance to

talk about

what they were going through so right

before i went into any of the content

that they came in for

i said let me know what it’s like

where you’re calling in from how are you

handling what’s going on around you

and when i posed the question

i was met with silence

lots of eyes looking back at me lots of

people looking down

people fidgeting nervously and that

silence was 10 seconds

and then it was 15 seconds and then 20

seconds

and i’m sitting in my chair thinking

okay i should just move on

i should just move on and then at 30

seconds

one person speaks up and they talk about

what they’re going through and then two

more people

speak up and that sets in motion a whole

catenation of people

being able to talk about what they’re

going through

from just that one person giving them

that courage

and it made me think about as a leader

how often do we fail

to wait how often do we not give people

the time to talk about the their deepest

concerns and the deepest things that

they’re feeling because the silence

is awkward because it’s uncomfortable

when you give people time to articulate

matters of the heart

you can see that it helps to talk about

your experiences

to understand them i had another student

who was an emt

from pennsylvania and he told us a story

about how

he was working one late evening and

an elderly couple called the hospital

because the husband

wasn’t feeling well so my student gets

in an ambulance

and drives to their home and picks them

up and transports

the man to the hospital

and they run some initial tests that are

inconclusive

and then they think to run a kovic

diagnostic test on him to see

if that’s what is ailing him and the

test comes back positive and only an

hour later

this man passes away in his hospital

room

the next morning very early

in the morning my student is still

working and the wife calls

the hospital because she’s not feeling

well either

so my student goes in the ambulance to

pick her up

drives her to the hospital

same path is followed they run some

initial tests

inconclusive they run the covid tests

on her and it comes back positive

and this woman that my student picked up

early in the morning

passed away three hours after her

diagnosis

in the same room that her husband passed

away in

the night before

and i’m watching my student talk about

this and i’m watching how

he’s struggling trying to articulate

what he saw there’s filler words in his

speech there’s

gaps there’s um’s and us and i thought

hmm why is that it’s because

a lot of times our memories feelings and

experiences

exist in the pre-conscious stage the

level below

our ability to articulate it and then

during the process of verbalization

we’re ascribing words

to those memories feelings and

experiences and in a conversation

when you’re talking with somebody that

person is filtering what you say

through their subjectivity and in turn

that can lead to insight and

understanding because that person

can ask you questions and show you

perspectives

you haven’t seen before or they can give

you advice that you never thought about

and that’s why a lot of times in

conversations we have

those eureka moments or those moments of

clarity

because it helps to talk about your

experiences to unders

understand them now

stepping out to understand an important

lesson here is that people give you all

the right hints

to see their worlds another thing that i

did in my sessions was

i would invite my students as an

icebreaker to find

one item in their house that’s most

meaningful to them

out of everything and students would

bring me laptops they built

by themselves they would bring me

trophies they would bring

pictures of family members or memorable

vacations

and another part of our training as

orientation leaders was

when our students would come into the

meetings we were told to notice their

backgrounds

their bookshelves or their pictures or

whatever may be in their screen because

that would open an avenue towards

conversation

and so one of my students during the

icebreaker she was from china

i noticed when she came into the meeting

she had this cute

plush elephant on a sill above her desk

and when i told my students to go find

their item she went and pulled this

elephant

off of that sill and brought it to the

camera and said this

plush elephant was a gift from my mother

when i was six years old

for my birthday and i’ve kept it

ever since and i thought oh that’s

amazing that is so cool and what i would

always do is i would ask

my students one question about the item

that they presented

so i asked this student what’s your

relationship with your mom like

and she looked at me and put her head

down

for a long time

i asked an innocuous question i didn’t

think that

it was anything that visceral and then

she looks up and she says

i don’t get to see my mom very often she

works

day in and day out trying to support our

family and i never get to see her

and in that moment i realized that what

looked to me as

a plush elephant that represented a

childhood memory that was cute

was actually reminiscent of a

relationship with her mother that she

did not have

that she could not experience

and that’s why i think that a zoom

window is a rough

or an interesting metaphor for the

personality

because in someone’s zoom window you can

see things like their background you can

see into their worlds

and in the same way in real life when we

interact with people there are things

that we can see their personality

their interests their hobbies those

things that are ostensibly on the

outside

but a lot of times we forget that those

things are actually connected

to that which we cannot see that which

is deeper

in and more inward facing and so if we

can ask those kinds of questions

and have ears to hear we can connect

with others better

that’s why compassion is a bridge out of

hardship because during times of trouble

some people can pass out of those times

quicker

because they have the resources they

have other opportunities they have

options

they have security but compassion looks

back to see

that person that is stuck that person

who is forgotten

that person who is unable to move

forward and compassion

makes a way for everyone towards the

brighter

future and so in the same way that we

can look at other people to understand

them better

it’s important to look at our own lives

and what we go through

to extract the meaning from it here’s

the final thought

it’s important to ground your hardship

in something meaningful

i love this illustration here because

there’s a person standing in front of a

mountain and i think that’s

perfectly an example of how when you

look at a problem

such as it is it looks insurmountable

but when you can ground that problem in

a meaning that is bigger

something that’s more compelling it

becomes

navigable so here’s a way to look at

what you go through

in order to take the meaning from it ask

yourself this question

what could it mean to go through

something as the person you are

when it is occurring for as long as it

is happening

the way it is happening it’s not that

all the answers will come at once but

it’s that if you can

answer even one part of that question

that’s meaning enough to move forward

that illustration on the slide of a ship

in

in a storm when a ship drops its anger

in the storm

it’s not that the ship will stop moving

back and forth over the waves

it’s not that the ship the ship’s sails

won’t be pelted by the wind anymore it’s

that

that ship is moored to something greater

and that’s meaning meaning

mores you to something greater so that

you can withstand

what you have to go through

so finally if we can learn to understand

others better we can change their worlds

that’s the three

step process and if we can understand

the meaning behind what we go through

we can change ours as well

thank you

you