Last Summer

Shining sun burns green leaves of the trees outside the window. It is summer again.

Has it already been one year? Those days when I was busy preparing HDS Orientation 2005 with my lovely friend Shauna seem to be just yesterdays. We started our work with so many worries and finished it "exhaustedly". :) It was, however, the most exciting and valuable summer I have ever had.

Being an Orientation coordinator? A person like me should not take a job like that. If you know me before, that would be the first thing comes to your mind when you hear about it. So do I. That is why I submitted my application at the last moment. Although I have already had another summer job offer from Lamont library, I thought I might need to do something different and more challenging. I learned to speak publicly after I graduated and worked as a journalist, but somehow I lost the ability again after I came to the US. For two years I had been as quiet as or maybe quieter than I used to be because of the language.

Fortunately I had many good floormates like Ashlea, Ben, Haymin, Fletcher, Xavi, Donavon... who had created such a good environment for me to practice and improve my spoken English. Even though, I still could not imagine how I would have done with my job if I did not have Shauna as my partner.

I first met Shauna at summer language program in 2004. We both enrolled in French and were in the same discussion group. I still remember the first time when she introduced herself. We also had a study group but I did not join because I had to work in the library. When the new semester started, I saw her again at Professor Sarah Coakley's class. I did not expect her to remember me but she did. We had very few chances to talk since we were not in the same section. At HDS it is not unusual if you talk to someone you never met before and find out that s/he is actually your classmate.

When I knew that Shauna would be another coordinator, I was sure that we were going to have a great summer because we already knew each other. She is the kind of person who would try to make everything perfect and never be stingy with her congratulations on other people's accomplishments.

We did almost everything together even though we seperated our work. When we were editing the Orientation booklet, we had the idea of taking a photo together instead of having two individual photos in the booklet. If you look through all the previous booklets, it is the first one that is been put in this way.

For the whole summer, we stayed in our "windowless" Orientation office at Divinity Hall. Every day, we stepped in the office with a lot of stuff in our minds and left with no less. There was so much pressure. But when you have a good friend to share with it, things would not be that bad. That is what I had learned from last summer.