Coming Up This Summer

Today is the last day of classes for students here on the quarter system. For many, that means they'll soon be taking a few months off of classes to work, relax, or do whatever else they do with their summer break.

In the RAPP office, it means a shift in focus rather than a break. Here are a few things we'll be focusing on this summer (which you'll get regular updates on through this blog):

• Recruiting RAPP XXVI! New to us this year is a student leadership position for recruitment. Jojo of RAPP XXIV and Brice of RAPP XXV will be working together to coordinate our recruitment efforts, including keeping our usual efforts going and innovating new means for connecting with potential RAPPers.
• Interviewing RAPP XXVI! For our second year, we'll be offering interviews over the summer. We already have one lined up for next week and hope to have a steady flow of interviews throughout the summer.
• Finding the rest of RAPP! The search for RAPPers will kick into full gear over the summer. We hope to find the names of all who have graduated RAPP and contact information for those still around. This is partly for the intrinsic benefit of knowing who we are, but also as a lead up to...
• Planning the RAPP 25 Year Reunion! The RAPP Reunion Committee has already been working on this and our "save the date" mailers will start coming out in the next few weeks. Still, there is much to do to get ready for this amazing coming together of RAPPers!
• Mini-Reunions! RAPPs XXII-XXIV have been talking about their desire to reconnect, so we're working together to plan "mini-reunions" for the summer.
• On-going community outreach! While UC groups need less of us during the summer, we'll still be offering workshops. Already scheduled are workshops with Student Orientation Leaders, Leadership Scholars, and Upward Bound at the College of Mt. St. Joseph.
• Hiring our newest facilitator! RAPP hopes to employ a Public Ally for the coming year, so we'll be working with them to find the best new facilitator we can!
• RAPPORT! At the last RAPPORT meeting of the school year, many members said they'll be around over the summer and don't want to lose the connections they've made. So, we'll be having RAPPORT meetings and hopefully community service throughout the summer.
• Lots of randomness! There will be many other random things that come up throughout the summer - hopefully you'll keep reading up here to find out what they are! :)

Food for our Minds and Bellies!

It takes a while to get ready for a RAPP retreat.

A year to half-a-year ahead of time, we put together the year's schedule. Then we make reservations with the locations and reserve buses to take people there and back.

Closer to the time, we three facilitators work over several meetings to plan sessions that we hope are relevant, meaningful, and challenging. We discuss the theory behind what we're doing, look at feedback from the group on what interests them, consider our overall curriculum, brainstorm a variety of ways to approach the goals of the retreat, and finally piece it all together into nine hours of in-session programming. Then there's the work of putting together all the supplies needed for the selected activities and general useful things for the house. We track who will be able to attend (and, in some cases, for how long) and make final payments with the retreat center.

Then, the night before, comes the funnest part: buying snacks!

I thought it was funny to see how much snack food (junk and otherwise) we got for the ~70 people coming to this weekend's retreats. Wow - that's a lot of food in my book!

We provide three meals at the retreat center; but I quickly learned as a RAPP member (and had reinforced as a facilitator) the importance of having snacks to keep people going through the long hours - especially knowing that some never go to sleep.

Hidden amongst that pile of food, of course, is a lot of Oreos! :)

-Rebecca