One hundred-and-twenty-something new students registered this week, and are off on Wilderness Orientation in pouring rain. When you first walk in the door, you are accosted by student tour guides who are primed to escort you through the maze of registration: signing in and receiving info; checking in and out of the Health Center; the bookstore and mailroom; and the dormitory.



Beau, our most recently enrolled student, poses for his facebook photograph.



New arriving students must be overwhelmed at many levels. For one thing, returning students are reconnecting at the start of sports camps.



Mike hangs out by the door with guides.



The traditional lap-sit always works.....



At Proctor, we use the word "Orientation," with a capital "O" a lot. We use it as if it means "introduction" or "beginning." The noun "orient," however, means "east," and the verb "to orient" means to get one's bearings....position....and sense of place by observing the east, presumably at dawn. (I suppose one could "occident" oneself if she looked west at sunset....) Orientation, then, means situating oneself, or getting one's bearings (by looking east, but we'll forget that detail.) We are gaining our bearings by heading north.

 

Gaining a position from the rising sun is not possible this week, and groups are dealing with rain, but the true orientation that we seek is found. As valedictorian Ben LeCompte '01 once said, "Proctor is not a place; it is people."