So, it's another cliche to add to the list that nothing in life can remain in a steady state. There is always a progress, a movement, a growth. One way it's put is that everything is either growing or dying. There is no steady state. What we see as the steady state is what it looks like when there is what appears to be kind of a stable pattern of growing and dying at a rate that makes sort of a plateau that can last a long time. Like if we see a baby growing, well the growing becomes obvious with the quick changes, but with an adult we don't see those changes. We see what appears to be a person kind of repeating themselves every day and sort of being the same for many, many, many days. And yet that is the outward appearance of a system that is constantly renewing itself. Every day with eating, with sleeping, it is a constant building from the cellular level on up to the full organism. This steady state, this idea of staying the same is just what it looks like when there is a stable pattern of continuous growth and decay in balance. And it's easy to just look at it as this is staying the same. It's easy to neglect and ignore the idea of this continuous growth because the overall appearances and for ourselves our internal feelings can often simply feel the same. So it seems normal for us to begin the day by simply assuming without any thought that we are the same person. We were yesterday. I mean this is all very reasonable. And yet at the lower level underneath the surface at the basic level there is this continuous growth and death and cycling. And we are continually changing every day. Again, something that we've probably all learned but not something that we necessarily think about. I remember as a young child learning that the idea that every cell in our body is completely different after seven years so that after seven years everything that you're made of is completely new material from what was there seven years ago. And I always thought that this was quite a fascinating idea. But I don't know if it's really sinking in to how I see things. I think it's much too easy to become comfortable with the steady state. The idea of being the same. And certainly during my worst times of time wasting escapism this idea of staying the same is certainly a contributor because if you feel that this is just it, it's going to stay like this. It makes it more excusable, more forgivable, easier to waste a day. What's a day? But by becoming aware of this idea of continual growth, continual change, then we can't simply continue in sort of an automatic default inertial course. There's no choice but to change and develop every day. And all this came to my mind today because I had as I talked about last time went into a deep rest where I took a long night's sleep and completely let myself completely rest from everything and just allow myself to wake up as a new person and say, I am going to restart everything. And you know, I found today it was very difficult to get back into my routines of exercise and work. I felt like I had to start it up again. I had to once again make myself do something that I didn't want to do. And I had become very comfortable with my regular exercise routine and I was happy with it for a period of several weeks where I was just rolling through it with complete consistency and not comfort in this. It was still uncomfortable to do the exercise as any good exercise should be not fully comfortable. But in a sense, I was comfortable with that routine. Today I just had this inertial feeling of I don't want to do anything. And it made me realize that we really do have to renew what we're doing every day. There is no automatic continuation. There is no automatic repetition. Even something that is a habit is not something that is automatic. There can be levels of something being automatic and there can be something that's almost automatic. We don't have to think about it. But that's only the most extremely baked in habits. Things like I always use the example of brushing my teeth. Brushing my teeth is a completely built-in habit that I have no concern about dropping that habit. I'm completely convinced that it is useful and I just do it as a completely automatic thing. Something like exercising. That's something that requires a bit more effort, of course. And although I'm completely convinced of the value, it's easier to come up with excuses for not wanting to exercise today. Brushing the teeth, it's like, it's only a few minutes and the advantages are obvious. The excuses of I don't feel like it just can't get through. But with exercise, there can be any number of reasons. I deserve an extra day's rest. Some people don't work out that hard. Sometimes it's okay to just live a generally active life and get some good movement and you don't need to have a hard workout too much. And the list goes on and on. We are great at, the human mind is great at generating excuses. It really is a great creative skill. The creativity of excuses is certainly a powerful expression of human creativity. And so this comes up every day. Some days may feel closer to automatic and some days might feel picking ourselves up off the ground just like an unconscious body. Just like having to like drag ourselves like a corpse through our tasks or anything in between. But every day, we have to remember why we're doing what we're doing. And we have to really make it clear to ourselves why we're doing this. And we have to renew our actions and do it again for that day. There's no carrying forward in the ultimate sense. Of course, the stronger we make our habits, the closer it gets to that automatic extreme. But there's no automatic. There's no automatic carrying forward. Every day must be lived as a new day in which we are a new being taking new actions. So go out and be today.


So thank you all for being here today for our first virtual orientation leader rally. We're going to be hearing a little bit about orientation tonight and a little bit more from the Office of Sustainability about what sustainability on campus can look like. So we have a little bit of content for you and hopefully you all have some questions that we can answer and maybe get you a little more excited for coming to campus. Before I hand it over to Kate, I'm going to introduce myself. You'll be hearing a little bit more from me throughout the night. My name is Tori Helms. I use she, her pronouns and I'm the assistant program manager for orientation at UVM. I'm really excited to welcome you all in August and I know that these sessions can sometimes be a lot, but we really want to make sure that you're prepared and welcome you in the best way possible. So without further ado, I'm going to hand it over to Kate. Hello. So my name is Kate, I use she, her pronouns and I am a senior here at UVM. I'm also an environmental studies major and I have been working with the Office of Sustainability through various programs and initiatives for all four of my years here at UVM. Today I'm going to talk about waste on campus and food on campus. And one of my associates, her name is Claire, will be talking about transportation afterwards. So we're going to start with food, I believe. So one of the programs that the Office of Sustainability and Dining Partner on is called Ecoware. And this program is the fact that students can come to dining halls and instead of eating in at the dining hall. And, you know, getting plates there and eating food in the place, you can take a to-go container with you out of the dining hall. This is really helpful for students who have like short windows between classes.  It's very helpful because dining halls close at eight o'clock and stuff like that.  But as a university who values sustainability the way that we do, it was very important that we created this program so that you had that flexibility with your dining plan, but also that you were not using a single-use container every time. So they're just plastic to-go containers, but they're durable plastic. So you should not be recycling them. You should not be throwing them out. They are a loan taken return program. So I have here one of the key tags. I just keep it on my key chain here. It's got a little coin in it. And the way it works is that when you come to school, you will go into the dining halls. You can ask some of the dining workers for one at the cash register or eco reps, which is a group of student leaders hired by the Office of Sustainability. And they're hiring right now. If you're going to live on Trinity, you should apply. You can find us on the Office of Sustainability website. They'll be tabling and helping you get signed up for this program, which means they will give you one of these little key tags. And then whenever you go to the dining hall and you want to get eco-wear, then you will swipe your card for one of the unloaded meal plan little dine-in times.  Then you can go around and fill it up with whatever you want.   They will run it through the dishwasher and you get a tag back.  It's pretty simple, but it's really important that we keep that return rate up because every year we have to replace a number of containers because they get misplaced or they get stolen or they get put in the wrong places, like left somewhere that they're going to be found and it doesn't work like that. We don't have people patrolling looking for them. So make sure you bring back your containers to a dining official location. So I've talked about them in the dining halls and it's also true you can use them at retail locations. I believe New World Tortilla and Skeeny Pancake, which are two dining locations that are run by community restaurants. They do not use eco-ware, but places like the Marketplace and the Marchet, which are not dining halls, but they're run by Sodexo in the same. They have the same kind of food offerings. You can use eco-ware tags at those places. And at those places, you can get a discount every time you use eco-ware. It's only 25 cents, but that kind of thing adds up when you have, what is it, like 180 points for the semester? Like, yeah, that means an extra milkshake for me, you know, if I use the eco-ware every time. So highly recommend getting involved in the eco-ware program. And again, you can return dirty containers. You don't need to clean them before you bring them back. So just we want to see them return to us so we can keep the cycles going. I think that's the long and short of eco-ware. And I want to say I'm going to be here the whole time. So if anybody has any questions, feel free to, like, put them to me. And furthermore, you can email sustain at uvm.edu. And that is the opposite sustainability kind of, like, hotline. So feel free to do that. Is there anything orientation leaders and such want me to go over about that before I move on to waste? No, I'm seeing shaking heads. Cool. All right. So the other thing I'm going to talk about is that at UVM, we have compost programs within the res halls. So they are these little green bins. They have an orange latch on them so you can keep them closed. And they're usually kept in common rooms on the main floor or near the entryway. They're different in every building. But all buildings have them, pretty much. And that's really effective and nice, because it means that when you cook in the dining in the dorm kitchen and things like that and peel an apple for apple pie or have leftover scraps because you, I don't know, trimmed something. I don't know, whatever. You can put all those things in the compost bin, which is a huge, huge diversion of waste. So let me talk briefly about compost, because that just occurred to me that some of you might not know what compost is. Compost is the process of turning organic waste into usable soil and dirt. I believe it's CSWD is the name of the facility that turns our organic waste into compost or into dirt, and they sell it. It's a product for them. So we pay them to take away this organic waste for us. It diverts from the landfill and it ends up getting sold as a garden product, which is just like so much better than rotting in a landfill, which are the other things that organic waste doesn't really rot in landfills. Landfills have a sealants on top and stuff like that, so organic food can't decompose and process. It just stays there, which is a handy thing about landfills, right? So basically by composting things, you are removing it from landfills, removing it from the waste stream, putting it towards something more effective, encouraging that cycle of decomposition and reusing resources and materials and such. So it makes me feel good when I can put something in the compost. And it's basically only food scraps. You can put in meat and dairy products, which you have a home compost. You probably don't do that because it will attract bears, but you don't have to worry about that at a professional compost facility. They've got it, fences and stuff. But so we have these bins, they emptied out every few days by custodial. We try and keep them neat and clean, keep the lids closed so that there's no smell, but it's really not that much of a big deal. Smell wise and things like that, just put anything that would break down in there. We do not allow paper products in our compost, which some of you who have a home compost might put like newspapers and cardboard and things in there. CSWD doesn't do that. So food and like plant matter only. But it's a fairly simple process. And we've diverted a lot of waste. I don't remember any of the numbers off the top of my head, but it does take a little bit of getting used to for some people. Another fun thing about the compost is that if you live on the fourth floor of a residence hall and the bins are on the first floor, you're not gonna wanna go down there every time you eat a banana, right?  It just looks like a little brown paper bag and it says compost on it in green and it has a plastic liner and it's a decomposable plastic and it basically is something you can keep in your fridge and it won't smell bad, I promise, as long as you keep it in the fridge because it'll take hold and it won't be a big deal and you just take it out once a week the same way you take out the rest of the trash in your dorm room. And this is something you need to talk about with your roommate as well because if you share a fridge, they might not want like apple cores in their fridge, but it's also something that most people are usually okay with because it doesn't smell. You take it out regularly as long as you're on top of it, it can be a nice feature for your room and that is a great way to continue composting despite living on the fourth floor or any kind of distance from compost bins. There's also compost in the dining halls. And that's much easier, I think, because they're right there in the same place you put your silverware and your used plates and your trash and once again, paper products go into trash recycling, whichever one is relevant, food product goes into compost. That's pretty straightforward and well-labeled in dining locations, I would say. I think the main goal here was to talk about and then the rest halls because it's a little more confusing for residents. I believe that's everything I'm supposed to talk about. Did anybody have anything else here was supposed to cover? Hey, Kate, could you talk a little bit about not having garbage bins around campus? Okay, yeah, sure. So it's actually a common complaint. Besides, we have lots and lots of trash recycling bins, I promise, but they're all inside. And let me tell you a little bit about that because we live in Vermont and it snows in Vermont and it's also very windy in Vermont. So it's a little bit difficult to have regular all year round bins outside. I've actually spoken to several people about this issue and have heard some of the issues with up the chain, like some of the obstacles and the bureaucracy of getting this to happen. And I promise there's more than enough trash and recycling, there's compost in the Davis Center, but there's not compost in regular academic buildings. But you just need to step inside of a building to find them.  There are, you just need to take a second, step inside a building, they're usually right inside the door. And I said that there's weather restraints that make this really difficult to happen. There's also labor constraints, as with many places, there's somewhat of a labor shortage, but also it's just not cool to ask your custodial staff to walk out in the middle of a blizzard to empty a trash can. So we try and make it simple on them, we try and make it, ask for our community, just walk inside a building to find your trash can. It keeps the place cleaner. That's the other thing is it's windy. So not only will it knock over bins, it'll also blow things out of bins. Having that volume of bins is just not necessary for the amount of waste that our campus generates. Having them inside is fine. So if you would rather choose to have them outside instead of inside, that's a different route to take there, but I think most people prefer them inside, especially in the wintertime. I think that about covers it. Any other questions or thoughts on that? I'm seeing shaken heads. Okay, so I guess that ends my piece here. Thanks for listening everybody. Welcome to UVM. Thanks, Kate. I think Claire, you're going to talk a little bit about transportation now. Yep, hi everybody. My name is Claire. So I've also been working with the Office of Sustainability for a bit now, and I'm the Sustainable Transportation Intern for the University. And basically what that means, transportation is like a scary word to a lot of people, but it's just like how you get from point A to point B. So when you get to campus, I'm sure you're going to be super overwhelmed with the amount of things to do on campus. There's a lot. And while you're exploring campus, you know, have a good time. That's great. But part of what we do is help you get around campus to experience those different things and then also get off campus, because Burlington's a really cool place. There's live music. We have a beautiful beach. We have really nice hiking trails around here, things like that. So how you get from point A to point B is kind of what I focus on in my office. So, yeah, sorry. I'm just distracted by comments. So one of the biggest things that we promote in our office is bringing a bike to campus. If you don't have a bike or you're afraid of biking or you've had a bad bike accident or whatever has happened to you, that's totally fine. But if you do like bikes or if you're kind of new to them, we highly recommend bringing one. It makes it a lot easier to get around campus. We have storage for bikes in almost every residence hall. We have outdoor storage for bikes around all of our buildings. It's a very bike-friendly campus. We have separated bike paths all throughout Burlington. And right along the water, there's this one, like, things like 40 miles or something in each direction. This beautiful, separated bike path that goes all along the water. It touches all the beaches. So like if you want to go have a bonfire with some friends, you can just bike down really quick and it's really easy. So we really like bikes. If you don't have a bike, if you're like flying to campus or something like that, we have this awesome program called Green Ride Bike Share, which is all electric bikes. We have a bunch of hubs around campus and you can pay an annual membership or you can just like check one out when you walk up to the hubs or just bike racks where they stay. But you can just check one out when you walk up to it or you can get an annual membership which is discounted for students. So it's only $50 a year which is like less than $4 a month and you get access to this electric bike that you can use to get wherever, which is really cool. So check it out, Green Ride Bike Share if anyone wanted to write that down. GreenRideBikeshare.com I think is their website. So if you don't have a bike, we have these bikes available on campus. They're also available all throughout the Burlington community. This is kind of a local thing that UVMs partnered with Champlain, which is a nearby college for. So that's a really, really cool opportunity too. We also, if you really like bikes, we have a UVM Bikes Co-op where you can work. You can learn how to fix up bikes. You can get your bike fixed by them for basically free. They only ask that you pay for any parts that they need to order. So all the labor costs are totally free, which is really cool. And they also rent bikes for $25 a semester, which is like the cheapest bike you will ever find. So that's UVM Bikes Co-op if anyone's curious about that one. That's kind of my spiel on bikes, heavy proponent of bikes over here. But also getting around campus, if you've looked at the campus map, which you can do at uvm.edu. It'll show you a lot of more about the transportation around campus. So we have a campus shuttle that kind of goes between each of the campuses. So if you live really far away from the gym or something, you can just hop on this shuttle. It's totally free. And then you can take it across campus. You can look at like where the routes will take you and plan it out. So the campus shuttle is really useful. You can also use the local bus system, which is called GMT, Green Mountain Transit buses. They're also really great. That's how you can get like downtown. That's how you can get to, you know, like neighboring places. Like we have this really cool city, Winooski right next to Burlington.  They have, you know, music. They have this other vegan, but they have this awesome vegan place called Pingalo, which is this great restaurant. They have this like beautiful little riverway, you know. So if you want to get around GMT, the buses are pretty great. They come typically about every 20 minutes. So you're not going to get trapped somewhere.  There's one that just loops around Burlington. So it's like pretty small route. So you're not, you know, ever going to get like dumped somewhere far away. The buses here are pretty trustworthy and the bus drivers are really sweet people. Other cool thing about the local bus is that it's totally free. You just have a cat card. I'm not sure if you guys know about your cat cards, but it's, it's just like a little card that identifies you as a UVM student. You can use it to scan into buildings and things like that. When you get on the bus, you scan your cat card and it's totally free. UVM has covered the cost of every student riding the bus for free. So you've kind of already paid for it with your tuition, so we highly recommend using it. It's also great that I'm not sure if people know this either, but UVM situated on the top of a hill. So if you bike downtown, you don't need to ride back up. You can take the bus. That's, you know, and I've done it many times myself. I go down for sunset or something like that. I ride my bike down and then I take the bus back up. And all of the buses in Burlington also have bike racks on the front of them. So you can just put your bike right on the bus. Don't have to worry about lugging it in with you, you know. So the bus system is really great. We also have a lot of commuter buses that come from really far distances. So if you're like trying to figure out how to get back for winter or winter break or Thanksgiving break or something like that, we have so many bus lines that come in and out of Burlington. And we have special contracts with certain bus lines so that you can get to your hometown just for breaks. They don't normally come to Burlington, but we've arranged it with the university. So if you look up, I think it's called the long distance travel options for UVM. There's a whole webpage that we have about this and the different bus lines that can get you places. Same thing with trains. And then we also have an airport that's about 10 minute, 15 minute ride from the university if you want to fly in and out. And they don't go everywhere. You know, it's Burlington. It's not huge, but they go a lot of places. So let's see. Covered bikes, bus, train. Oh, yeah. And then we also have this thing called car share, which is exactly what it sounds like. If you need a car, if you need to get some bear and you don't have a car, we have shared cars. You can sign up for an annual membership and you basically just kind of just like pay for every trip that you take. I think it's an hourly fee or something like that. And we have a discounted student membership for this too. But we have cars on campus that you can check out for. An hour if you just want to go to the grocery store. You can check them out for a few hours. If you want to go on a hike, you can check them out for a weekend. If you want to pop up to Montreal with some friends. So you don't need your own car on campus. You can have this membership and you just pay, you know, when you use the car. And we have two of these cars located across campus. I think we're getting two more electric ones soon, which is pretty cool. And then there's also like 20 other cars that have part of this car share program that are scattered throughout Burlington. So you can, you know, kind of pick them up wherever. If the ones on campus are being used, you can go downtown and pick one of those up. So if you feel like you need a car and that option is absolutely available for you. I think that's all of the transportation stuff. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me. I've been doing this for a while. I can note that in the chat, there's a question directed at you. What bike lock do you recommend? Oh, yeah. U-locks are definitely the best bike lock if you have one. There is bike theft around campus. It does happen. It happens anywhere that you're going to go in any small city. It's not a huge issue, but we heavily recommend U-locks just because they're harder to cut through. And also when you get to campus, we recommend that you register your bike. And what we help you do this, we'll have stations set up to help people with this. But basically, you just bring your bike over, you read the identifying code on your bike, and then we take a picture of it and we put it into our system. So if it is stolen, you can be like, hi, my name is Wilabula and my bike got stolen and I'm freaking out. And then we'll have our police services looking for it. So that is another thing. I actually have one more question that I'm getting in the chat quite a bit. And it's about the extent of the buses. So the question is, are there buses to ski resorts or shuttles for skiing anything on campus? Because that's coming up a bit. Yeah, totally. So, yeah, skiers and snowboard is a big thing at UVM. We have ski buses run through the UVM ski and snowboard club. So if you don't know about that, it's pretty cool. You should look it up. But they have ski buses that you can sign up for. I'm pretty sure it's totally free. Yeah, I'm getting nods, I think. Yeah, cool. It's totally free. And they go to specific resorts. So like if you have a sugar bush pass or a smuggler's knowledge pass or something like that, they have specific buses that go to specific resorts and they leave in the morning and then they'll take you home in the afternoon. You can also use the car share cars to get to the mountains if you need, if you don't have a car on campus. You can use those whenever you want. There are the GMT buses that I know of don't take you directly to any of the ski resorts. But I think that they do get you kind of close to them. They can get you into like nearby towns and things like that. But I've never seen someone use them to get to the mountain itself. Yeah, that's that. What was the other question? I have a couple more for you while I'm here. So you talked about, we touched on bike locks. What actually happens if you rent a bike and it gets stolen? Oh yeah, they forgive you. They're kind about it. If you rent a bike and it gets stolen, they understand. You are liable. So what that means is that you don't get your money back or anything like that. But these are all, for the most part, the bikes that you're renting are bikes that have been abandoned around campus, which means they've been left for more than three months and haven't been touched. Like after students have left campus. Just like if you don't ride your bike for three months it's not going to get common to you. Don't worry. But after students leave campus, we have a lot of leftover bikes. So the UVM bikes co-op takes them, fixes them up and then rents them back to students. So for the most part, these are free bikes that they've gotten anyway. So they're not, you know, they're not crying over it or anything. Great. Do you mind if I ask you one more? Because I'm getting a few people about this. Can you talk about cars on campus for freshmen? Yeah. So part of the reason we have a ban on cars for freshmen, there are exceptions for certain people, people who really need a car. But for the most part, we don't allow cars on campus for freshmen. Part of that is because we want to encourage you to use all of the sustainable transportation options that I've just talked about. Part of it is also that we don't have a lot of capacity for parking lots on campus. We greatly value our green space. We greatly value having trees. We greatly value having space to put up new buildings that you have places to hang out, places to learn, places to live. And we just don't necessarily have the space for more parking lots. It's also to help encourage students to explore the downtown Burlington area. Students are a huge part of Burlington. Like when you're walking around, you're going to see so many beautiful young faces of like all of you guys, all of you and your peers. So we want to use our influence in Burlington to help support local businesses because we're such a big presence here that we want to kind of give back in that way. So when people have cars, they tend to travel farther abroad and we want to kind of help people their first and second year really make a home on campus and in Burlington.  We're not like anti-car. We just like to have that kind of local focus for our freshmen. I also see a question in the chat about, do the buses go to the airport? Yes, they do. There's a specific bus line that goes to the airport. I believe it's number 11. And then also around breaks, UVM has extra buses that are running kids to and from the airport directly from campus, which is really cool. And they do the same thing to the Amtrak train station in Essex. So if you're taking the train or if you're taking the bus, if you're taking the train or if you're taking a plane around breaks, there's specific UVM buses that will help you get there. And some questions about car share just because a few of them are coming in. Do you have to be a specific age to use car share and how much does a car share membership cost? The cost itself, I don't know off the top of my head. I'm sorry, but I am sure it's available somewhere online if you just look up car share Vermont. You do have to be, you just have to have a driver's license basically. And then one thing you should know when you sign up for a membership is that they have, it's like a $30 one-time fee where it just pays for like a background check.  They want to make sure that they're putting the keys in the good hands. If you have a few speeding tickets or something like that, like I know I do, it happens. People aren't perfect. That's fine. They're just looking to make sure that you aren't a super aggressive crazy driver with a huge track sheet. But that's the one thing is that there will be an extra like $30 fee just tacked on to the very first time you sign up for the membership and you'll never see it again. And then after that, it's an annual membership. But I don't know the exact number. I'm sorry. Kate, I'm going to ask you another question. Buses that are free to students, did they go all the way out to Waterbury or Middlebury or is it just directly in the like in this area? The buses do go out to there is a Middlebury bus line. I don't think it comes super frequently. I think it's like twice a day or something like that because it's a commuter line. So it's like morning and evening. But yes, there is a bus. And if you go on just, I don't know if it's.com or. I think it's.com GMT.com Green Mountain Transit. Their home page has like a really nice easy to use map that you can kind of zoom in and see where all the buses go. Or you could also do like the trip planner function on GMT.com and you just like type in where you want to go and where you're going from and it helps you. Another thing I'm just going to plug really quickly is that our office has me and Kate have both worked on this bike guide. So another kind of plug for bikes. It's a guide that shows you how to get to all of the best like natural areas around campus. So it tells you about how long it would take to get there. It gives you the easiest route. The least steep route is what we consider the easiest. And there's like 12 different routes. And then we have some maps and the guide to that show kind of all of the like natural areas around campus. Because we know that people really value outdoors, especially typically coming to UVM. There's people with a bit more of an outdoorsy focus. So we've put together this guide that hopefully you'll be seeing around campus and you can pick up a copy for free whenever you want. Not hearing Tegan have any other questions right now. So I am going to jump in for the interest of time. But if you have any other questions, feel free to put them in the chat and we'll have a little bit more time at the end of the session. Thank you, Kate and Claire. I learned some amazing things as I am relatively new to UVM and Vermont. I'm actually really excited about the bike guide hearing about that because one thing that I found slightly difficult is trying to find those hidden gems. So if you've already got them mapped out with a least steep route, that sounds like my kind of jam. All right. I'm going to jump in a little bit now and forgive me. We've already passed the welcome and kind of what we're going to go over. But for the rest of the time, we're going to talk a little bit about what you can expect at orientation. And we have a few of our orientation leaders on this call. We also call them OL. And we're going to ask them a few questions about their orientation experience, maybe a couple of sustainability questions, and then we're going to allow you all to ask any questions that you may have. And we'll try to address as many as we can with the interest of time. So first, I'm going to talk a little bit about what to expect. So hopefully by this point, you all know that orientation is going to be August 24th through the 28th. Now, there's a bit of an asterisk with that date because you all by now should know your moving date is either the 24th or the 25th of August. One thing to know is that if you are moving in on the 25th, you aren't going to miss any of the orientation programs that happened on the 24th. We rotate everybody through. We have six teams going through orientation. So we make sure that you don't miss anything by moving in on that second day. Both on the 24th and on the 25th, we'll have an orientation welcome where you'll meet your orientation teams and more of your orientation leaders. And that'll follow move in at 3pm.  But for now, those are a couple of important things to keep in mind. So if you have family coming with you to help you move in, 3pm is when you have to say goodbye, whether that's going to be really easy for you or if it's going to be a little bittersweet. So another thing to keep in mind and you might have seen this lately in your emails from our office is that important dates can always be found on our orientation roadmap on our website. So the roadmap, if you scroll to the very bottom, has everything from May to August that we'll be doing all of these sessions, all of these recordings and everything upcoming is listed on there. And that's one way for us to try and give you all the information we can right up front. And we update that as often as we can as well. So that, like I said, all virtual content leading up to August is on there. And I want to highlight a few exciting programs that you can look forward to before we get those details out to you. So a couple things you can expect during orientation is a welcome from your College of School. So if you're in the College of Art and Sciences or if you're in the Center or the College for Education and Social Services, I think one of mine and Teagan's favorite welcomes is going to be the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences because you could meet some of the animals. I'm a little jealous about that. You'll have some time during orientation to meet with your advisors to meet with the staff supporting you and to meet some of your classmates as well. We also will have a career interest group mingler. So here soon you'll get some information on your checklist about a career interest survey that will be having you all take that way you can get to know a little bit more about what are your strengths and what are your interests in your career field and how can the Career Center at UVM support you and help you engage with students who have similar interests to you. So we'll have a little bit of information in that session. Some fun things maybe you can look up. Play Fair is one contract that we're very excited to bring to UVM. We brought it to our incoming students last January and absolutely loved it.  We'll also have Rec the Night which is our University Rec Center is going to be offering some classes for you all to participate in during orientation before all the incoming students come back. We'll have you doing some Zumba classes maybe some biking if you're interested in that. They'll also have some drop-in hours for volleyball and basketball just to give you some opportunities to get used to those spaces before everyone gets back to campus. We'll have some clubs and orgs come in that way you can meet them get to know them and maybe join a few. We'll have a really fun pep rally that athletics has planned because there's a big soccer game that Sunday and right after that soccer game there's going to be one of UVM's I think best traditions honestly when it comes to incoming students would be convocation and twilight induction and so this is every incoming student has this opportunity to get together and you know really celebrate the fact that this is a big step in your journey in your education and you're from here from some amazing speakers and just feel like that big community coming together before classes start the next day a little bit more about orientation and our orientation leaders so if you don't know already and I've tried to highlight them on our social media as you'll see a little plug at the bottom but if you want to get a jump start and meeting some of your orientation leaders definitely follow us on Instagram because I try to highlight them every week but our orientation leaders are going to be your mentors on everything orientation we have a few of them here with us today that I'll let speak in just a moment but you'll be working with them throughout orientation and one of the things that you all will be doing is competing actually throughout orientation so we have six teams red orange, gold, green, blue and purple there's no yellow because our school colors are green and gold and you all will be divided based on your learning communities into one of those teams and throughout the weekend you'll be competing to earn points and we'll have this giant game show on Sunday where one team will win the opportunity to be entered into a raffle to win some really great prizes that our office has purchased in hopes that you all will really participate throughout the weekend because we have some great things for you we have 160 orientation leaders so there's bound to be someone that can help you and give you some insight on maybe some of the questions you have and one thing that I've been really excited to highlight this year is that our 2022 orientation leaders collectively represent eight countries 20 states and DC so we have people coming from all walks of life they have different interests they have different experiences because we want them to really represent you all the incoming class and be able to give some insight that could help you in your journey so I talked a little bit I'm sure Tegan has some questions but before we go any further I'd really love to give our orientation leaders the opportunity to introduce themselves that they're on the call tonight we only have a few not all 160 are here but if we could do a popcorn style because I can't see the screen I'm going to put Ryan on the spot could you introduce yourself as a major where you're from and just a little fun fact Hello everyone I am Ryan Malkowski my pronouns are he him I'm going to be a sophomore in the fall and I'm from Lancaster, Massachusetts and I am majoring in biology and fun fact probably one of my favorite things to do around Burlington is to go to North Beach and Lone Rock good spots Ryan could you popcorn another orientation leader popcorn do Kate Marion Hi guys I'm Kate I use she her pronouns I'm from Westchester, Pennsylvania and I'm majoring in business administration in the Grissman school business a fun fact about me is my favorite activity to do at school is Tammock and I call it the redstone forest but there's a bunch of different names that people call it all popcorn to Ellie hi guys I'm Ellie I'm an upcoming sophomore I'm environmental sciences major oh I use they then pronouns a fun fact about me is this year I'm going to be a track leader as well so you guys have any good questions on that I'd love to help I'll popcorn to Ali hi I'm Ali I use she her pronouns I'm from Doylestown, Pennsylvania and I am majoring in environmental studies and a policy and a fun fact about me is that I play saxophone and clarinet so if you have any questions about music program just let me know. Okay am I missing an orientation leader again I can't see the screen it sounds like that was everyone thank you all for introducing yourselves before we move on I think we have just 15 more minutes here and are there any questions Tegan for our orientation leaders in the chat that we should address sorry I'm working my way through them you all are asking questions very quickly and I'm trying to keep up so I have questions one of the orientation leaders for orientation leaders maybe you could answer does the UVM shuttle go to the barn where the equestrian team practices it doesn't but there's a there's like a bike path that goes to the farms me and my friends always go see the cows and it's really easy to find it's right behind the Patrick gym and it crosses behind the track it's just like a like walking path but not a shuttle thank you and then for Ellie there's actually a few questions for you about which you're leading so as of right now they haven't told us exactly but I'm leading a service track and hopefully fingers crossed doing habitat for humanity which I did last year but there's pretty much any question about any of the tracks because we went through all the training we did it all together but if you are doing track it's an amazing opportunity and I've heard nothing but good things about every single trip and you'll make friends that will stick throughout the rest of college which I think is really nice to have coming in like knowing a group of like 10 to 12 people like just having that solid balance I think is a great way to start your year year yeah I'm also seeing a lot of questions in the chat about where we find our move in date so your move in date was actually sent to you already via email on the email where you learned about your learning community so when you got your learning community assignment it should have also said the date that your move in was if you don't know your move in date please feel free to send an email to orientation at uvm.edu and we can support you in that process we'll also be having some upcoming sessions at the end of July and throughout August with the residence life that will help you prepare for those big moments but definitely look for the email prior to that because it's nice to have that information Tegan while you go ahead are there any drawbacks to moving in on the second day of the 25th no yeah that's one thing that we great question one thing that we really thought hard about the really cool thing about your incoming class is you are record breakers we've never had an incoming class this large before and so one way to really make sure that we're having you know authentic intentional conversations with you all and making sure that you're getting the information you need as you go throughout orientation we thought really hard about that and so we knew we had to split the move in in between two days but we wanted to make sure that no information was lost there were no downsides to moving in on that second day so anyone moving in on the 24th I'm sorry you don't get anything extra special everyone on the 25th I think that's the same exact experience just a little bit later fantastic question and Tegan while you round those up I have a few for I had orientation leaders prepare and I'll just have you all kind of popcorn again that way we can highlight you and everyone can see your face but I'll start with Ellie this time can you tell us one of your favorite orientation memories coming students can look forward to I really enjoyed the night of orientation where they put on they just like have a lot of things going on for the freshman to just get out of the dorm and do things I think it's really nice because it's a time where no one knows anybody and you will make friends for like the rest of school like I met one of my best friends standing in line to make a stuffed duck I had no idea who they were beforehand but like that's just kind of how you make friends and it's a very like fun night there things everywhere like I know my roommate went to the science disco there was like a drag queen like dancing in our amphitheater like I think it was just like a very unique fun experience to like really kind of shake the nerves of like starting college you want me to popcorn to someone or yeah I think that's a great example too so if you want to popcorn I feel like that's awesome I'll go to Kate my favorite moment from orientation it's probably the same thing as Ellie is it's the first couple of nights that we were there they had karaoke in Brennan's which was so much fun and you would win prizes and stuff if it was a raffle and you would win prizes and yeah there was a silent disco which was really fun and they also got it's so stupid but they had like this hungry hippo setup thing that was really fun it was it was it was great the week of welcome I can popcorn to Ellie yeah I loved like the first nights they were awesome but I think my favorite was Twilight induction because at that point I already had like met some people and then it just we ended up taking like a really cute picture with like candles and stuff and it was you could feel the community that night and it was awesome seeing everyone together and it just it like made you feel like yeah I'm at UVM I'm ready to do this so that was super fun and popcorn Ryan mine is the same as Ali's the Twilight and Convocation ceremony I met some of my best friends there through the kid living next to us this past year and it was just a good time the Waterman Green is a great place and just to see your entire class all there is just amazing Ryan or Ali could you talk a little bit for maybe those who don't know what the Convocation and induction Twilight is could you talk a little bit more about it on the spot so the Convocation they started I think we're in front of Davis and then they had like the president spoke and they brought in some other people so they talked about like their UVM experience and then from there we did kind of like this march and all the clubs were like lined up on the side so you could see like a bunch of different activities that you could do and then you got to the Waterman Green and they kind of did this like chant and everyone like lit the candles at the same time and you agree to uphold the community standards during the Twilight Induction Ceremony yeah now I think it is a really cool opportunity and all incoming students will get a really cool shirt that we represents your learning community and so you really like I think both Ryan and Ali have explained like you really feel the community during that event before you go into college my second question and then I'll hand it over to all of the student questions that Tegan's kind of gathering I think this is a really good one and I asked Ryan to share it with me already so I'll start with him what is one thing that you brought to college that you didn't need we were talking about sustainability earlier so we kind of want to share what might not have been that important so Ryan could you provide a little bit so this may be kind of unexpected but for me it was a coffee maker so I drink a lot of coffee as probably many of you do but I never use it I just had it when I went to the dining halls for breakfast with my roommates but it was just one thing that I thought I would use all the time and I never used it but yeah I'll pop corn to you Ali I think for me I like wildly underpacked because I was in a triple so I think also watching for that but the one thing I did do was pack an immense amount of sweatshirts which I did not end up needing I think you should get like a core like five to seven and cut it off I think I probably brought about 12 to 14 sweatshirts I think how much clothes you need and bring clothes that like you can easily layer and like can use for multiple things and then the other end of that don't forget to bring some cold weather gear if you're not going to be going home before Christmas break or winter break definitely make sure you have some cold weather gear Ali or Kate do you have anything that you want to show that you maybe didn't need to see y'all like basically the same thing as Ali I was in a force triple too so I underpacked but so many clothes I just didn't wear because you think you're going to go to college and wear them but if you don't wear them now you're not going to wear my college yeah I brought this like shoe rack organizer thing and I hung it from my bed but I never used it and I just put shoes like in the closet so if you don't tend to like use a shoe rack organizer don't buy it I think one of the other things that Tegan and our office and myself and I saw at the end of the year there are donation things in the halls to hopefully collect some of those items that still can be used that students might not want anymore we saw a few things a shoe rack was one of maybe a lap desk you most likely don't need that there's libraries there are desks in the common areas plenty of places to study I don't think you might need that lap desk and then a lot of rugs so I'm not sure if that was very popular but if you're not going to clean it you might not need it any questions Tegan I kind of run through the questions I had for the OLs any questions from the incoming students or orientation leaders yes there are orientation leaders you can grab these as you'd like you don't have to answer the question but so my first question that I'm going to pose to y'all is hang on there's a lot of them how does ordering packages work to my dorm I can do this so I ordered a couple things not as many as other people but it was really simple you can find the address of your like building I'm pretty sure in the main desk they have the address and like I ordered from Amazon a lot and you just type that in as the shipping address and they deliver it to the building and then once the like the building gets it the main desk sends you an email that like oh you received a package then you go up to the front desk and you grab your package very simple thank you is there storage for skis and snowboards anybody anybody I can take this one but to my knowledge I think I've just stored mine in my room so some people have snuck them into the bike rooms so then they're locked but you're supposed to just keep them like in your dorm I kept my skis in my closet they fit sideways but it's kind of on you I will say I knew someone whose skis got stolen out of the bike room so I wouldn't I just recommend keeping them where you can have eyes on them a lot of times after skiing and snowboarding we would leave our skis in the hallways to dry and then we would bring them and I put mine under my bed so just to kind of like keep space great can we talk about how are the club sports at UVM I can do this one I do club running which is a little it's a little less strict of a club team but I think all the club teams are pretty amazing it's a great way to get out and like continue doing something you love but like a little a lot less of the pressure like a normal like team like at our school I think it's fun you get to travel I know our soccer team have traveled pretty far to go play some games I think it's a really great way to like get out there and like keep yourself like active will still like meeting new people any other big questions taken must have items to bring to college that's a good one I think I had a tiny fan that I was able to clip to the top of my bed because in the beginning and very end of the year your dorms get hot very hot so you will need a fan to like that was only thing that kept me sleepy at night was my fan so I'd recommend getting at least one that you can put somewhere close to near your bed so it keeps you cool at night I can also do this one for me I live down four strip as many of the other owls and we did not organize our shoes very well so we got a shoe rack and it helped organize our room a lot because we would just leave our shoes just on the floor and they would kind of just be a mess so the shoe rack helped a lot for us if you're in like a force triple it could save a lot of space Ryan did you share that or did like each of you didn't purchase one did you know we shared it we got it after we moved in and shared it so like some of the other shoes that we didn't use all the time went in there yeah okay to get any other big ticket question it'll be our last one is there a common one I'm looking I'm looking to see because it's kind of going on for a while um okay when do you get cat cards that is a great question so hopefully soon you'll get some information again on your checklist sorry owls I'm jumping in for this one you'll get some information soon on your new student checklist that talks a little bit about your cat card and uploading your photo and sometime during that first weekend during orientation we will have everyone go and pick up their cat card and so you know your orientation leaders will help you out with that they'll find a time maybe during some team time to gather everybody and head in that direction to pick them up so you'll get those when you get to campus and that's a I just wanted to say you can put your cat card on your own and it's really it makes things so much easier so you can they'll send you an email about that too yes yeah definitely recommend the mobile cat card and the instructions will definitely talk about that um so that is our last question we've done over a little bit um if you have any other questions and you followed us on instagram I peeked a couple times during the session and saw that a good number of you have followed us um on our story right now we are accepting questions that you have for your orientation leaders and if you want to put in some of those last minute questions we can collect them throughout the night and then tomorrow we'll have some answers on those for you on our story um but I think that's all we have for you tonight definitely thank you to the Office of Sustainability for coming and speaking about dining and waste and transportation I think those are all very important things to know before our students come to campus thank you to our OLs for being here and for sharing some information um I hope you all enjoy this time our next session will be July 11th and that's going to be on Burlington and beyond that'll be all um all orientation leaders just talking about their experiences here in Burlington maybe some study abroad maybe some fun adventures and we can answer any questions that you have during that time there as well if you have anything super pressing please feel free to reach out to UVM orientation at UVM.edu they send all your emails to you so you should know the address by now and we'll be happy to answer those for you and if you have anything fun to ask the OLs again that question box is on our Instagram I think that's all we have for you for tonight thank you for coming and we will see you on July 11th