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