ABOUT O-WEEK

Rice’s Orientation Week is fondly referred to as O-Week. It is a unique, unforgettable experience that does not exist at any other college. By design, O-Week serves many roles as it is meant to be a time where you settle into Lovett and become familiar with the campus, your room, your new friends, and your new classes. While O-Week will provide you with a fun introduction to your life at Rice, O-Week also has a strong focus on academic preparation. As a result, half of O-Week is spent preparing you academically for the upcoming year. This includes getting your fall schedule set up and coming up with a (tentative) outline for whatever major(s) you might be interested in. All of your academic questions will be answered by one of the many qualified academic personnel during the week, including Faculty Advisors in your area of interest and Peer Academic Advisors (PAAs), highly trained academic students who know everything about scheduling, registration, and major requirements. Another awesome resource at your disposal is your very own Lovett advising team! Your Advisors have been at Rice for a while now and are eager to help you, so make sure to seek out help from Advisors who share your area of interest. The other half of O-Week is devoted to getting you fully accustomed to both Rice’s social life and Lovett’s specific college culture. Your O-Week group will be made up of seven or eight other new students, coming from disparate backgrounds and having varying academic interests. The leaders of your group will be your 4-5 student Advisors, 3-4 from Lovett and 1 Co-Advisor from another college. Your Advisors will be your enthusiastic guides through O-Week introducing you to all of Lovett’s unique traditions. Most importantly, your O-Week group will serve as a support structure that stays in place long after O-Week and is there for you as a means of support throughout your time at Rice.


Now that you have gotten a brief introduction to what O-Week is, you may be wondering what is World ExpO-Week? What are all these puns? We are glad you asked! Across Rice, it is tradition to theme each college’s Orientation Week differently, making for unique experiences across the board. These themes usually incorporate college traditions and cheers into the broader themes, which is why not everything appears to be spelled right or make sense at first. This year, Lovett College has chosen to put on World ExpO-Week: Building the Lovett of Tomorrow, as an homage to the 1939 World Expo in New York. World Expos and the World’s Fair are meant to bring together the best and brightest from across the globe to showcase what they have to contribute to the world of tomorrow, and we hope to combine this forward thinking element with a celebration of the diversity in thought, character, and background that makes Rice and Lovett such a special place. Celebrating the differences that make everyone unique forms a core part of this ethos, as does the power of collaboration and unity, the strength we demonstrate when we come together for a common cause. This theme emphasizes our wish for Lovett to be a home for anyone and everyone and a place where they can make strides towards the future they want to see. To this end, you will find many references (especially when we get to the group names) to people, places, and things that have a global significance, and of course to Lovett itself, with our mascot (the Stag), our namesake (Edgar Odell Lovett), and our motto (EOL, RRF), among other references as well. It may seem confusing now, but just wait till August rolls around. We promise it will all make sense then!