Week 1 update!

Today marks 1 week and 1 day since Amanda went back to Indiana. So far it's been a pretty good week of work. We had a Veterans Orientation on Monday, a 2-day professional development retreat for staff on Wednesday and Thursday, and a transfer student orientation session on Friday. Needless to say it was a very busy week. The biggest transition so far is going back to a school where orientation is much more thorough than it was at USI. It has been really refreshing and rejuvenating to return to doing orientation the way I remember doing it early in my career. I'm really looking forward to doing a 2-day freshman session again! The first one starts tomorrow! It has also been nice to see the school spirit here. Everywhere I go, students and staff are wearing UTA apparel. When you come to orientation, check-in is packed with UTA welcome banners and a huge statue of the UTA logo that many orientation participants photograph themselves standing next to. UTA "swag" is seriously everywhere you look. It's amazing, and reminds me a lot of my days back at Tennessee and FSU. Living on campus again has not been quite as enjoyable, though. Don't get me wrong...I'm thankful that the university is providing me with temporary housing, but I forgot how noisy students can be. There's also some parking lot lighting that shines into my apartment like a light used in old school interrogations. A blackout curtain has helped, though. Needless to say, I'll be really excited to move into our new house in late-July. Speaking of the house, our offer has been accepted and the inspection came back pretty positively! We will be moving in the last weekend in July. All-in-all, the first week has gone well, but I really miss Amanda and the dogs. I get a chance to visit them the week of July 4th, so I'm really excited about that. In the meantime, I'll keep busy with learning the new job and watching Big Bang Theory reruns on TBS. Oh, and going to my second Rangers game this Wednesday! Hopefully they play better this time around.