“SPOP Program” is stupid and redundant… stupid and redundant

So, i’m sitting here in my room.  But it’s not really my room.  It’s 3:14 AM, in Mesa Court’s Viento, Room 103A.  SPOP II baby!! So… yes, I seem to have missed a whole lot since the last time I blogged.  It’s just that so much has happened that blogging about almost anything seems to be such a daunting task.  Well, back to the present.  It’s the first night of SPOP II, and things seem to be going well.  My hall is dope, the staffers are bomb, and the kids seem to be groovin well.  We just finished unleashing our wrath on the all of mesa court.  Yeah Vandals.

Well anyway, I think I should blog a little about my first SPOP experience.  It was waaaay to good to just let it slip into history without so much as a keystroke. A week ago, I arrived at my first SPOP assignment ever, Brisa.  Surprisingly, they stuck me and Jon in the same hall, which is a bit odd considering the fact that we’re roommates.  For the most part, the coords tend to place staffers that don’t know each other well into the same hall.  Oh well.  It totally seemed to work out for the better.  So, anyway, the important part of the whole weekend is the last few hours of the program, and the catharsis which occurs in the incoming freshman as a result of the weekend’s closing activities.  It really is amazing when you look back at the beginning of the weekend and you zoom ahead 3 days to the end.  Those incoming freshman come in not knowing what’s going on, a bit shy, a bit reserved, and for the most part, unwilling to be there.  As soon as you see them the last day of SPOP, everything seems to be changed.  They love the school, they love the people, and many of them realize that they’ve found their niche.  One of the better parts is the fact that somehow, in some way, you contributed to that shift in paradigm.  It’s an amazing shift.  It’s at that point that you realize why you applied for the position, why you went through the sweaty palms and racing pulses of that interview, why you went through those 10 weeks of training, half day training, weekend training, why you went to all those spopticulars, and why you sacrifice so much time with your other friends to chill with your fellow staffers.  It’s at that point that it all makes sense.  Then you know why countless people try to come back to the program.  It’s then that you know for sure that you’ve touched someone in a way that maybe they’ve never really experienced before… and it could very well make the difference between a memorable college experience, and a wasted one.  In that short 48 or so hours, you could have changed the course of someone’s life… for the better.

Yeah Butt Monkey Bandits!

So here I am again.  We’ll see how it all goes.
Ask me again in about 36 hours.