First Week of Classes!

This week, classes at Lake Area Tech officially started, and holy cow was it a busy week! There was some kind of activity going on everyday, so I was constantly running around and getting things ready or cleaned up, or helping other employees get their stuff set up and ready to go. I was telling my boss, that it felt like it went from 0-100 real quick!!

First off, we had three days of orientation at the Wellness Center for the students, so Monday-Wednesday I was running between LATC and the gym to help set up for that. I also sat in the Cafeteria every day this week over the lunch hour to try and get more people to sign up for my activities. Although I didn\’t get nearly as many to sign up as I did on kick-off day, I did get a few more people. I also doubled the size of my run club group – from 4 people to 8! It\’s a small group, but I\’m okay with that. Now, here\’s to hoping I can get up to run with them at 6 am!

I had a couple bigger events this week too, such as grocery bingo on Tuesday, a Tie Dye party on Thursday, and a \”Funny Masks\” event on Friday. For grocery bingo, I set it up in the cafeteria during lunch, they even gave me a microphone which was pretty exciting! I gave away a bunch of HyVee gift cards and boxes of ramen to bingo winners, and actually had a pretty decent number of people participate which was fun.

Thursday night, I put on a Tie Dye party, we ordered 500 t-shirts with our new logo on them for kids to dye, I ordered pizza, and we even got a DJ. It was quite the party! Unfortunately, I seriously underestimated how much dye they would use, because I ran out with an hour left of the event. Some of the students were okay with just bringing home a white shirt though so it worked out. Next time, I\’ll have to buy the dye in bulk!

Since this is my first year as an employee at LATC, I didn\’t realize just how quiet things got around there on a Friday afternoon, so unfortunately not many students stuck around for my \”Funny Masks\” event. 🙁 We had a guy from an entertainment company come in and give out funny masks that were actually pretty cool. I got one that makes me look like Darth Vader! But even though the students weren\’t there to take advantage of it, I opened it up to the staff, so all of them could come get a funny mask, and they LOVED it! I kept the leftover masks and I\’ll hand them out to the students at a later date.

I also TRIED to put on a Beach Retreat day today, but it didn\’t go very well. The plan was to reserve a shelter, make s\’mores, have yard games, and they could go swimming if they wanted too. Well, one thing after the other kept happening and it just didn\’t work out. First of all, the shelter I reserved didn\’t have a grill, so I couldn\’t make s\’mores. Then, I realized a majority of the yard games I packed up from the school were missing parts and pieces and were basically unusable – NONE of the bean bag sets had bean bags for example. And then there was the issue that no one showed up. I did have three girls come by, but after a look of utter disappointment, they told me they were going to get their towels and come back, and they never came back. Oh well, sometimes you win some, sometimes you lose some. I thought it would be fun to have everyone out to Lake Kampeska, especially for the ones who had never been there before, but I will stick to activities during the school week instead!

I have a couple of events lined up for next week, but not nearly as many as I did this first week. Although I will be busier than I was for the entire month of July – thank goodness! – things should slow down a little from the constant go, go, go that was this week. I am still loving this job and I can\’t wait to see what works and what doesn\’t.

Until next time! 🙂

Megan Reiffenberger