Here’s To Going Home Together

A few weeks ago, Kia, Randy, Tish, Amanda and I gathered in our session room at 5:oo pm to meet with students interested in volunteering with our office.  Given that the meeting started as the work day ended, we all had an interest in making the meeting as efficient (aka brief) as possible so that we could all head home.  We actually accomplished part one of our goal and the meeting was over within 40 minutes.  The going home part of our goal however went unmet for several more hours.

When the meeting concluded, we all sat down in the session room and began to talk about everything from pop culture to Amanda’s lack of rhythm.  As Amanda is apt to do she even displayed her unique dancing style by performing her own version of Soulja Boy’s Superman dance that had us all in hysterics.  After 30 minutes of random conversation we all noted how it was now past 6:00 and we still hadn’t gone home.  Undeterred by this realization, we continued to sit in the session room having alternating serious and random conversations many of which made us all laugh so hard we cried.

Finally, at 7:00 we all decided we had to leave.  By that point we were all ready for dinner and one of us suggested that maybe we grab some together.  I readily agreed as my husband was working and I had no one to go home to.  As if fated, we all recognized that we were in a similar situation and decided instead to grab dinner at a new trendy Chinese restaurant in New Town.  Once we had all ordered our drinks we decided to toast to going home together.  As admission officers, we are no strangers to spending afterhours time together especially during the busy reading and committee seasons.  But what we recognized several times throughout our evening (which by the way ended around 9:30) was that it is rare to find enduring friendships among your colleagues.  There are not many offices in which, after spending an eight-hour work day together, staff would not choose to spend an additional five hours together socializing but in the William & Mary Admission Office this practice is not uncommon.  We see concerts together, grab after-work drinks together, hang out on the weekends, and celebrate each other’s weddings together.  We are not merely co-workers, we are colleagues and friends.  We are a dynamic staff and while the photo of our staff has changed dramatically in the nearly 18 months since I wrote a blog by that name, the dynamic amongst us has not.  We are a pretty diverse, engaging and entertaining group of people if I do say so myself and we hope that it eases the minds of prospective students to know that we are people just like them.

– Wendy Livingston