Orientation, or should I say: A big waste of my time

The college of liberal arts and sciences has scheduled a 3-day (!) mandatory orientation for all new faculty. Today was the first day and it went from 8 to 4:30. When I was informed of this, I was already skeptical and, I admit, a bit annoyed:
- My employment doesn't start until next week! They give us $150 for attending but that's still a meager hourly salaray, especially since I have an article due in a week.
- The orientation is all about teaching, which is great for somebody who is new to teaching and doesn't do research in that field. Only a 2-hour luncheon is devoted to the nuts and bolts policies and the tenure process.
- We got homework: 4 articles to read. Did I say I'm not officially a PSU employee yet!?
- It's given by an outside organization, something about values in higher education.
As this information became available, my department head said that I probably wouldn't have to attend. But I went anyway, mostly because it's an opportunity to meet people. And I don't know everything about teaching, so I might learn something.
The answer is: I didn't! I don't think anybody there did, everybody was pretty annoyed with how useless the whole day was. At one point in the morning, we were in small groups for an "ice breaker", according to the agenda. Our group facilitator (from the organization) asked us "Who are you?". Olena started: "My name is... I'm from... My field is..." He wasn't happy with that answer and said: "Yes, but who ARE you?" Then, Chip said (I could see this coming by looking at this face): "I really hate this! This is so contrived." Amen, brother. There was actually quite a bit of bonding based on people's negative attitude. But let's look at the bright side:
- I met quite a few people. In several instances, I thought "The world is so small":

• Andrea, a chemist, is from Chattanooga.
• Chia Yuan (Russian history) spent some time in Stuttgart.
• Chip (English) has friends in Knoxville.
• Annabelle is from UC Davis and knows Veronica, the new Spanish coordinator at UT.

- We all got a PSU mug.
- They had vegan muffins for breakfast, together with some nice assortments of tea, and lunch was good.
The dean was very excited because PSU was just ranked #7 among "up and coming national universities": http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/college/national-uc-rank
Also, they announced a $25 million matching gift to PSU today to promote sustainability: http://investinportland.org/ Very good news indeed!