No, uni­ver­si­ties aren't far­ing a sud­den out­burst of a neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­ders, but they're def­i­nitely on high alert. As these warm, musky days of August roll for­ward, col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties across the coun­try are whip­ping out the pop-up tents, set­ting up check-in booths and pass­ing out pre-stuffed fold­ers to fresh­men, new grad­u­ate stu­dents and other fresh faces on their respec­tive col­lege cam­pus. Phew, what a long sen­tence. In short, it's ori­en­ta­tion week at tons of schools. Bring on the orientating!

I have one more day of my jour­nal­ism grad­u­ate stu­dent ori­en­ta­tion at the Annen­berg School for Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Jour­nal­ism at the Uni­ver­sity of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, and I'm wiped! In a good way. My 40-or-so other new stu­dent cohorts and I have been wowed with dozens of mul­ti­me­dia pre­sen­ta­tions, lec­tures and dis­cus­sions with fac­ulty, pro­gram direc­tors and cur­rent stu­dents. We're get­ting a full dose of the oppor­tu­ni­ties avail­able to us through our aca­d­e­mic pro­gram, as well as an oppor­tu­nity to meet and greet each other. It's ori­en­ta­tion over­load, and we're being given a lot of undi­vided and sin­cere attention.

And we're not alone. Across the coun­try, scores of new col­lege stu­dents are going through the same expe­ri­ence. It's dorm move-in week for lots of fresh­men, many of whom are accom­pa­nied by box-toting par­ents who get to attend their own "So your kid's in col­lege" ses­sions put on by cam­pus res­i­den­tial staff. Freshly landed inter­na­tional stu­dents are get­ting a taste of Amer­i­can stu­dent life in the form of meet-and-greet social mix­ers. New Ph.D. can­di­dates are set­tling into their new homes for the next few years, and they're often wel­comed with spe­cial ori­en­ta­tions tai­lored specif­i­cally toward their research interests.

The mas­sive ori­en­ta­tion trend that sweeps col­lege cam­puses each fall speaks vol­umes to the over­whelm­ingly wel­com­ing cul­ture toward new stu­dents. Over­whelm­ingly wel­come, it is.

These ori­en­ta­tions take tons of plan­ning, lots of admin­is­tra­tive sup­port, and of course, moti­vated coor­di­na­tors. Did you know that there's actu­ally a national orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cated entirely to edu­ca­tion ori­en­ta­tion pro­fes­sion­als? The National Ori­en­ta­tion Direc­tors Asso­ci­a­tion (NODA) gives out awards, schol­ar­ships and other recog­ni­tion to stand­out ori­en­ta­tion pro­grams at col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties across the coun­try. They pub­lish papers, hold con­fer­ences and net­work with Canada, even. A few years ago, I wrote about some NODA awards San Fran­cisco State Uni­ver­sity received for their ongo­ing sup­port of stu­dents long after ori­en­ta­tion fever winds down for the season.

The point is this. What goes on behind the scenes of ori­en­ta­tion pro­grams is of no use to those being ori­ented at the moment, but it's worth tak­ing a step back and not­ing their hard work. Being thrown head­first into an aca­d­e­mic pro­gram with no con­text or resources would be a shame. Stu­dents deserve to be pre­sented with a com­pre­hen­sive pack­age of what they've signed up for, as col­lege is such a large invest­ment of time, money and san­ity. Ori­en­ta­tions, while often manda­tory, are a school's way of respect­ing the com­mit­ment each stu­dent has made to the institution.

Here's to a Bet­ter­Grads tip of the hat to all the ori­en­ta­tion and stu­dent affairs pro­fes­sion­als out there who've put an incred­i­ble amount of time into plan­ning, prepar­ing and exe­cut­ing ori­en­ta­tion pro­grams on col­lege cam­puses this fall sea­son. Ori­ent on!

Or in the words of my new alma mater, Fight On.