The day before Hurricane Irene made landfall along the Eastern Seaboard, a friend asked my wife and I to help volunteer setting up an evacuation center in NYC. While helping out, I was trying to be as nice as possible to the people coming in seeking shelter. I’d stop my work to help people carry luggage upstairs, answer questions, and clean up water spills. All of which I thought was part of my job as a volunteer.
After helping a family carry their luggage up some stairs, a supervisor stopped me and said…
“You shouldn’t be helping the evacuees as much because we need to train them to know that this is a self-help facility. They need to do things on their own. Training them that we will help them with everything is just setting us up for failure because there will soon be a lot more of them then there are of us and we won’t be able to help everyone.”
As soon as she said that, I flash backed to the day before, when I was doing an orientation training at a school and the president spoke before me. In his closing remarks to the orientation leaders, he said…
“No matter what, make sure to never, ever, ever let a parent pick up any luggage.”
Then a couple of days ago on Twitter I saw this Tweet…
So my questions are, are we doing too much for our new students? Are we training them that no matter what they need, we are going to make it happen for them? Are we turning college into a daycare facility verses a place where you are expected to carry your own bag because, after all, it’s your life?
