Hey everyone!! Last week orientation started and it has been awesome! The first day of orientation was actually my birthday and it just marked the start of a great week. Let me tell you all about it!
I finally got to meet all my classmates in section A (the island section!) and our awesome section leaders Robbie and Aviva:
They are enthusiastic second years who have generously donated their time to organizing orientation activities for us, guiding us in our first days here, and making us feel very welcomed. Thank you guys for all your efforts for us, section A loves you both!!
We got a welcome from the MBA program deans, an introduction to orientation and to the Parker Career Management Center. I love how they decorated the conference room with flags from all the countries our very diverse class represents:
That evening I had dinner with some of my friends at Tomodachi Sushi in honor of my birthday. The sushi there is really nice and it is right in front of weyburn terrace.
Back to orientation we have been taking a class called Leadership Foundations with Professor Kashkooli:
Our section is so luck to have him teach us! He makes our lessons so fun and interactive. We had a lego man building competition (You should go to Ayushman's latest post for a picture of it) and many leadership cases. I know what you must be thinking "Cases? Ew what is so fun about that?". Well these cases are! We had one that described clues for a murder case and, at the time we did not know but, there were three versions of it with different information and we got in groups to try to solve the case (our team got it right of course!).
We also had another one where we had to imagine we were stranded in a mountain during a snow storm and had to rate, individually and as a team, a list of 12 items according to how important they were for our survival. I have to tell you guys I think I had the lowest score ever on this one, I have no survival skills. I hope I never get stranded in a snow storm in a mountain and if I do then I hope one of my classmates is with me, some of them turned out to be very good at this!
Did I tell you guys that section A is the best section ever and that we are out to win the glorious and coveted section cup? We were born ready for it, just look at all this section spirit:
We all secretly decided to wear our section t-shirts on the same day and people in the other sections were so confused wondering if they had missed something! It was so much fun! If you play close attention to the picture you can see Chris Varin, a fellow blogger, right there on the bottom right. He is also a proud member of section A!
Another super fun activity we had last week was the scavenger hunt! We ran all over UCLA taking funny pictures, according to instructions on a list, while we got to know all the campus. This is me and two of my teammates planking like champions during the scavenger hunt at UCLA:
Doesn't the picture scream fun!? If there had been a planking competition we would have won for sure!
There is still another week and a half of orientation to come so please look forward to my next post about week 2 of orientation! A second year told me week 2 is way better than week 1!
-Alejandra Rodriguez '14
Follow UCLA Anderson at @UCLAMBA
