Retreat! Retreat!

Totally unrelated photo.  I just happened to think this was cool.  Can you spot the unicycle and the rhino?

Last week the HMC admission staff went on Part I of our annual retreat, spending time in not one but two exotic locales*.  I actually look forward to the retreat all year, and not just because there are endless snacks and homemade deanly treats for our delectation.  See, my favorite part of admission is tackling the meta questions.  Who are we trying to serve?  How can we best make this happen? 

In addition to the meta questions, there are also the Big Plans for next year.  Some will come to fruition, some won't.  The elaborate Communication Flow painstakingly crafted by Falone and Raissa?  Amazing if we can pull it off.  A second Fall FAST?  Maybe we can find the funding this year, maybe it won't kick off until 2013.  The entire staff blogging on a regular basis?  I'll believe it when I see it. :-P

By far my favorite moment of Staff Retreat Part I was the Travel 2012 Draft.  There haven't been significant changes to our travel and reading territories for five years, and so it was time for a complete all-cards-on-the-table overhaul.  Wow.  Intense.  And fun!  Most of us are keeping at least one or two former territories, but there were plenty of shakeups.  There were also plenty of impromptu geography lessons as various valleys were explained to the non-Californians (San Gabriel, San Fernando . . .) and those who had not been to Texas learned that Dallas is closer to Oklahoma City than to Houston.  It was also China's first time being an official draft pick geomarket, so go China!  (And yes, China is bigger than Texas.  I checked.)

Now we're back to our regularly scheduled admission lives, with plans for Staff Retreat Part II in the works (August, maybe?) and maybe even an Iron Chef Staff Social (#1 draft pick: Falone).  Good thing we have some leftover retreat snacks to power us through the upcoming busy-ness of two big summer programs and a soon-to-be-packed roster of interviews.  Dibs on the pita chips!

*A meeting room in the Pomona College alumni building and the Dean of Faculty's conference room at Mudd.  Not really "exotic," but the Dean of Faculty conference room is pretty swank in a sixties mod sort of way.