ALA's First (Annual?) Icebreakers on Ice

 

Hello Future Information Professionals,

Don’t let the look on my face fool you (I am the one in the Ramones shirt). I am still thrilled about ALA’s first event of the academic year! If you all don’t mind, I’d like to tell you a little more about ALA’s Icebreakers on Ice, which occurred this past Sunday. As I stated in my previous post, I want our ALA student chapter to be a fun mixture of both profession-building and social events. I originally saw Icebreakers as an opportunity for students to interact with their classmates outside of the classroom setting. What I have come to realize, during my short time at UCLA, is that our profession is quite small. The people in our classes today, will be our co-workers and colleagues tomorrow. Our internship supervisors and future employers were once, like us, struggling with information theory! Another unfortunate thing that I have noticed is that life (work, school, family, and relationships) often prevents us from getting to know the people in our program. To remedy this, I conceived the idea of Icebreakers on Ice.

 

My thinking behind this was that by having students step out of their comfort zones, from the library to the ice, I thought that ice skating might break down any barriers to meeting new people and would hopefully be a fun way for people to bond. While I did not get as many people as I had envisioned (I think that a lot of people were a little scared of skating and two people had to cancel due to illness), I do think that Icebreakers provided MLIS students with a good opportunity to interact with their classmates. The initial number of RSVPs may have been discouraging but my spirits immediately lifted when a group of four students decided to visit the ice arena after working on a group project. I did wish that I was able to reach more first-year students but I hope that of the ones who did attend, they were able to make a couple new connections with people in the program. If not, I will be more than happy to introduce them!

 

 

This was my own personal attempt at event planning and I am satisfied with the results. With this task completed, I will use my experiences to better understand what students want from ALA programming and to better advertise these events in the future. I am confident and even more excited that ALA’s two planned university panels will be a smashing success!

 

Until next time,

Nick Auricchio

ALA President