When I signed on as the Student Engagement Intern at Wabash College this summer, I knew I’d be busy. What I didn’t fully grasp was just how much goes into making orientation run smoothly and effectively.
A huge chunk of my time went into New Student Orientation. This ranged from a lot of different task to prepare incoming freshman for their first real college experience. From making posters to getting rooms reserved and prepped to even coordinating with the mayors office for a chance at students to see Crawfordsville. A lot goes into it that I would have never expected.
I also helped organize community service projects for incoming students, which meant coordinating with local organizations, mapping out logistics like meeting times and job assignments, and making sure everything ran smoothly on the ground. There’s something rewarding about knowing a group of brand-new students’ first experience with Wabash is giving back to the Crawfordsville community.
On the logistics side, I reserved food trucks for campus events, which sounds simple until you’re juggling vendor schedules, timing, and making sure there’s enough food for a few hundred hungry students. It taught me more about event planning than I expected.
Beyond orientation, I worked on broader student events to get the campus ready for the year ahead, and I partnered with our mental wellness group to help build out programming and content supporting student wellbeing. That work felt especially meaningful connecting students to resources before they even realize they might need them.
Looking back, this internship wasn’t just about checklists and logistics. It was about building the small, often invisible pieces that make Wabash feel like a place where students are genuinely taken care of from day one.
