Winter Leader Retreat

Last Saturday was the Engineering Orientation Winter Leader Retreat! Aside from getting Orientation Week 2015’s leaders to meet each other and outlining the responsibilities of each type of leader, the event also answered a lot of questions that most of us Bigs were kept in the dark about. First of all, the theme of this year’s O-Week was chosen to be the Four Elements – Air, Water, Fire, and Earth, picked over Battle of the Decades and Board Games. (Naturally, a lot of Avatar references were made).  Who’s who in EngFOC was also revealed: Hannah Gautreau and Matthew Van Gennip are to be this year’s HEADCOMs, and Ben Morcos and Nicola Muzzin are this year’s SuperHuges.  Most importantly, some of the changes that will be made since O-Week 2014 were announced. The 16 different colour groups will still exist, but to fit the theme, 4 superteams, each made of 4 colour groups, will represent the four elements. EngFOC is also placing a lot of emphasis on rain plans, which I’m sure many of the 2014 Frosh (and others too) are grateful for – being stuck in the E2 Wedge Lab hallway with 100 other first-years and EDCOM going back and forth yelling at people on that rainy Tuesday wasn’t the most pleasant of experiences. We were also glad to hear that O-Week would not be shortened because of Fall Reading Week – at least not this year.

It’s a little weird to relive a bit of the Orientation Week experience, especially at the end of the school year. None of the 2019’s have really done any chanting or brainstorming for silly ideas since O-Week, and looking for creative team ideas – someone came up with the brilliant idea of having “Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson” as one of the Earth teams – and making up team chants (like “Waddle waddle waddle! Loo loo loo!” for the Penguins) really brought back that O-Week feeling of general craziness and fun. However, to the 2019’s, and probably to others as well, the Leader Retreat served as a reminder of how far we’ve come since we got here only eight months ago, and let’s be honest, it felt a lot shorter than that – we were just newcomers ourselves. And now, all of a sudden, we’re almost done first year. I haven’t got a clue where the time went, but I’m happy it was spent with some of the best friends I’ve ever made, and I’m proud to be working with those friends to welcome the next batch of Waterloo first-years. Hopefully, we can make Orientation even more memorable for them than it was for us.