Trusting Strangers and Weird Wedgies

6:00am came early, thanks to the dark shades at The Paramount. Teambuilding Day, the most anticipated day of orientation, was finally here. I peeled the roaches off my face, threw on my TJ Maxx found Paper Denim jeans and American Apparel t-shirt, and me and the new roommates were off to Hough Hall to meet up with the cohort. Of course, we had to stop at IHOP to fill up on cardboard waffles before the day’s adventure.

We arrived at the campus, now regretful of having UPS boxes sitting in our stomachs, and our group of 70 students piled into a few old yellow school buses. All of a sudden, our pants turned into skinny jeans and we all just started talking about Bieber’s Christmas album and how our parents never let us do anything fun. 

We arrived at a beautiful, ancient oak spotted estate that had a pool, ping pong tables, conference rooms, and of course, rope obstacles that look random when dormant. We went into a big field and collectively played shoot-the-volleyball-80-feet-in-the-air-and-watch-it-knock-someone-out-when-it-returns-to-earth with our group leader and life philosopher Simon, who told us ten times that the secret to life is to remember people’s names (in this case, I can’t recall if his name really is Simon. I’m so screwed).

Trusting Matt, Austin and Michael with your life.

To manage the day’s activities, the cohort was broken up into small groups of about ten students. My group wrote chants, balanced hula hoops with our pointer fingers, wore climbing gear that perfectly and inelegantly amplified our private parts, climbed 30 foot poles and jumped off the top of them (of course), and snacked on Frito products that are made with cheap corn filler and artificial (but delightful) flavoring. Aside from weird wedgies and having nasty, awkward cheese breath from eating too many crunchy Cheetos, the day was a ton of fun. 

After trusting strangers with my life and eating barbeque hosted by some locals that looked less interested in life than my IHOP waitress that morning, we were herded into a conference room to create our teams for the program. And this is what goes down: you’re given a dull pencil and a piece of paper that has space to write down your background, professional experience, and awesomeness, and you tape that paper onto a wall. I’ll repeat that – you put your life on a piece of paper and tape it to a wall. 

Then 70 strangers browse over your life and either think it worthy, or think it miserable, unemployable and just plain sad. You had students like Brad write, “I DON'T WANT TO BE CAPTAIN” in giant letters as life’s sole describer. You had guys like me who pretended to have an amazing leadership background, but who’s handwriting was so bad, passer-buyers probably wondered how an invalid child had accidently been admitted into the program. Then you had papers like Daniel’s - “CEO of 30 companies.” “Manager of a billion people.” “Everything I touch turns to Gucci shoes.” People like this became captains through silent vote, and after the peasants went outside to sow seeds on the farm, this bourgeoise browsed through the papers on the wall again and picked their teams. I remember playing Omar in ping pong for a long while during the team picking, and he killed me every match. My pride was getting eaten alive, and I just wanted to go in a corner, drink something corn syrupy or hoppy and watch Liz Lemon scarf down a sandwich. 

Angie, Director of Student Services, called the 60 or so students back into the conference room, and we listened intently to the captains announce the new teams. It kind of makes you sick. You scan the room saying to yourself, “please God, don’t put that person on my team,” and He puts them on your team, and you throw up in your mouth (later to find out that the person you didn’t want will carry your team, become the best man at your wedding and literally save you from drowning in a river. That's right - don't judge). The teams are picked, and you write your team charter (goals, mission, etc.) at a banana-spider infested picnic table, each person subtly sliding in comments that make themselves sound interested, smart and capable (this kind of talk dissipates after Term 1). 

Ahh - the day was finished. I walked back onto the yellow school bus, said hi to the Gainesville Sun reading bus driver, turned on Bieber's latest, and I sat down. I slouched, put my knees up against the seat in front of me and texted my wife, “Dang, I’m tired!” She responded a few minutes later, “You're just getting started.”