Find something to do outside of work

So far I've tried to take time to speak on how fruitful life as a Student Affairs (SA) professional can be. Similarly, I've also mentioned how important I think it is for young SA professionals to find something they're passionate about that's related to higher education but not necessarily directly to their position. What I wish to do next is discuss how important it may be for your career to find something outside outside of work to be involved in.

Life in SA is not as simple as your typical 9-5 job. There's often a time commitment outside of normal office hours which is something many SA professionals, like yourself I'm sure, anticipate and actually look forward to. When your career involves students' lives it's hard not to be overly involved in your work. However, in my young career I made the mistake of being too involved in my work and not giving myself enough time outside of work to enjoy myself. There's most certainly a difference between being overly involved in one's work in a positive and negative manner.

As a graduate assistant (GA) for my university's housing department I was required to maintain office hours five days a week from 1-5 pm. I found that most of my work involved communication with other departments and the supervision of work orders that needed completing; with these tasks in mind, I felt that my time would be better spent working in the morning than the afternoon. So, I found myself going to my office early in the day, as early as 9 a.m. on some days, and spending my whole day at work. Let me be clear before moving on: No one asked me to spend this much time in my office. However, I felt that a less-structured. longer office day afforded me time to complete work in my office as well as walk the grounds to check on maintenance requests and visit the maintenance department.

Nevertheless, what I thought would benefit me in not restricting my day to 1-5 p.m. and instead embracing a longer work day eventually resulting in being stressed out in very short order. I didn't allow myself to schedule any time for me! My days were spent working on housing matters and my evenings were spent on class work. This was my own undoing but this is exactly why I'm writing this now! I want other SA professionals, especially younger ones, to be aware of what to avoid doing and what I think should be encouraged.

 Let me reiterate, it's extremely easy to wrap oneself up in work and not realize how little the time you afford yourself is. However, it's extremely important to find time for yourself outside of work, without your colleagues, and sometimes even off campus. If you enjoy writing then find a local coffee shop to spend part of your weekends in. Find a book to read. Visit family if they live in close proximity to your campus. Do something! As I said, sometimes you're just going to have to get off campus. Plain and simple. For me, I enjoy visiting a nearby park on the weekends with my girlfriend. There we feed the birds and walk the grounds. If I don't want to venture too far away from home (I live right across the street from campus after all) I try to use the gym at least 3-4 times a week to de-stress.

I see working out a couple times a week as more than an escape from work but also time that I can dedicate to my own mental and physical well-being. Even if I only find time for just one hour at the gym I feel so refreshed and happy that I'm ready for the stress that sometimes accompanies working in SA once the week begins. But maybe the gym isn't for you. That's perfectly okay! I found that some of my colleagues do not nearly enjoy using the gym as a stress outlet as much as I do. Maybe visiting your local bar is more your speed? Personally, I'm not one to really enjoy spending time at the local area bars so my weekend evenings so if I'm not at the gym I usually spent doing something fun with my girlfriend, something that gets us both away from work or our books. A bottle of wine at the comfort of your own home is sometimes all one needs. Maybe you're a Netflix person like myself who can spend part of their weekend binge watching a television series (check out House of Cards!).

Plainly, if you spend an appropriate amount of time outside of work then you may find yourself enjoying the time spent in your office even more than before! There's nothing wrong with looking forward to the weekend as long as you dedicate yourself to your career during the week. That's not to say that your downtime can't be time spent on something related to work. Far be it for me to suggest that your passion related to higher education can't be what you focus on outside of work but let me suggest that it isn't the only thing you follow.

You may find that enjoying time outside of work will be conducive to your performance at work. See, you benefit in two ways! I simply can't begin to emphasize just how important it is to get away from what dominates most of your brain power during the week. It took me months to realize just how important time to yourself, or in the company of a loved one, is. I'm glad that I do now though and I'll definitely take this lesson with me once I land my first full-time SA position.

Finding your passion Part 2

Once you've found that passion I mentioned in a previous post, well, it's time to do something about it!

One of the passions I mentioned was sustainability. I've started conducting my own research on sustainability in higher education and, believe me, this is a huge issue today. It appears that there are many institutions that face sustainability head on and many institutions that are behind the movement a little bit. If you're as passionate about sustainability as myself you can find plenty of resources on the subject online but I suggest you specifically start at your campus or local library. I've found that the resources at my library have been plentiful and informative. Surprisingly I also found that Pinterest had plenty of great infographics that really spurned me to conduct more research on specific universities and their programs. 

My school doesn't have the greatest sustainability program around by any means but there is a great group of students like myself who have been working diligently to change that. I became more interested in other aspects of sustainability outside of recycling during the fall semester of 2013. At that time sustainability initiatives at my university were stagnant. As a residence director I was able to facilitate a recycling program within my residence area that was quite successful in it's first semester and even more successful during the following spring. Word got out about the program and I soon met with another very involved student like myself who was equally, if not more empassioned, about sustainability efforts at the university. A small recycling program soon grew into much more. Myself and fellow passionate students restarted the Student Sustainability Council. I would gladly go into more detail on that later but for now I want to shift focus as to what I'm currently working on. 

What's great about Student Affairs is that you can often blend different ideas together and serve a larger audience. For example, I currently work in the University Writing Center where we use paper ALL THE TIME. I recently that Santa Clara University is home to a paperless writing center...this seemed nearly impossible to me when I first heard about it. However, with smart board technology this idea became a reality. There's not much information available about this school's writing center but I plan on sending out some correspondence to as many people as possible to try and figure out how exactly they put together a paperless writing center. 

This is now a goal of mine for the foreseeable future so you'll find some of my following entries will be discussing this same topic, while still maintaining the job hunt entries. I apologize for there not being more substance to this post but I promise to have more fruitful writing tomorrow, be well!

Learning from a bad experience

Even through adversity I think we can all learn from a bad experience in Student Affairs (SA). As you may have read in previous posts I didn't have the best experience in my graduate assistant (GA) position but I still picked up a couple things along the way that are really helpful in SA. This is going to be a short post due to the holiday but what I'm going to try and stress today is email etiquette.

I had always kept up with email correspondence before my GA experience but throughout my ten months as a Community Director I learned just how important email can be. Some of your colleagues may utilize emails as documentation; I suggest you do the same. Be organized with your emails by using folders, sub-folders, whatever you have to do. This may be invaluable to you later on when you want to double check on a prior conversation you may have had with a student, colleague, or superior especially. Documentation doesn't have to be either positive or negative, think of it as just covering yourself and making sure you always keep what you've said in the past straight. 

Additionally, double check and triple check your emails prior to sending! I can't over-emphasize the importance of proofreading. Trust me, I know proofreading can be tedious, especially for those of us who are strong writers and consider our writing to be complete after the first draft. Regardless, I still make mistakes from time to time and I'd hate for someone to form a negative impression of my work ethic based off some silly mistakes in an email. Of course, I also hope I'm not communicating with someone who would make such opinions off of minor grammatical/stylistic errors in an email...but still! Believe me, I double and tripled checked an email to someone at my university to arrange a future appointment before actually sending it but I was recently reviewing my inbox to see the very email with a mistake...IN THE SUBJECT! Instead of writing "Expressing my interest in *blah blah blah" (obviously I didn't really write blah blah blah, just using a placeholder) I had instead wrote "Expressing my interested in *blah blah blah". Such a simple mistake and nothing to cry over but I hate having someone see a mistake and stumble over my message before they get far into it. So do the right thing and proofread. 

Lastly, be timely in responses! You won't look crazy for responding to an email quickly so do it if possible! If you're anything like me, you'll likely appreciate a quick response, whether it's positive or negative because hey, least you have an answer or you're closer to one! Don't leave anyone hanging when they ask you a question either. The worst thing to do is to make someone wait days for an answer that may only take you minutes to formulate. 

To review, be organized with your emails, proofread at least once before sending, and be timely in responses. One last thing I'll leave with you, which I'm trying to incorporate myself actually, is to respond to emails even when you're not ready to. What I mean is, if someone asks you a question but you don't know the answer right away and do not anticipate being able to respond to that person in a timely manner later on, perhaps consider dropping a simple email acknowledging that you've received their email and that you'll be responding to them accordingly...something like, "Hey, just wanted to let you know that I've reviewed your email but let me double check a couple things before getting back to you with a final answer."

Easy as 1, 2, 3!

Finding your passion outside of Student Affairs

One of the best things I think you can do as an aspiring Student Affairs (SA) professional is to find a unique passion outside of "work" but not necessarily outside of your college or university. Of course, take my suggestions with a grain of salt as this comes solely from four years of an undergraduate experience and a year and a half of graduate school. However, in this five and half year time span I have been able to hold executive board positions with two separate organizations, worked in numerous areas within the university setting as an undergraduate student worker and later as a graduate assistant (GA) and intern.

There are two separate passions I've taken on as I've studied and learned more about higher education in this country. One such interest is sustainability and green living, especially within colleges. I can't explain it, I really can't. To be honest, the inspiration for this very entry came from earlier today when I was standing out on the patio of my parent's third floor apartment (visiting over the holidays) and looked out into the wooded area immediately outside of their apartment. The closest tree has to be less than five feet away! Regardless, I heard some rustling in the trees and took a look out there to see a couple squirrels chasing each other crazily from tree to tree, jumping from branch to branch with reckless abandon. I watched these animals participate in something that's likely very normal in their lives without any clue that I was watching them. I love watching "nature" unfold in front of my eyes, especially when I'm unnoticed. Let me stop here and prevent myself from over-romanticizing what I was looking at today but it really helps illustrate why I'm so into sustainability.

I've carried a phrase with me for some time now, "leave the world in a better place than when you got in it". For me, embracing sustainability is one way for me to do that. Sustainability encompasses many things such as recycling, reducing energy consumption, reducing waste, and educating others. Those are only a few things I think about in regards to sustainability. I hate seeing trash along the side of the road, especially when I see bottles, cans, cardboard boxes, etc. What irks me the most when I see trash like this is that those pieces of "trash" are all recyclable! I don't understand how people can discard trash out of the vehicle's window with no care as to how it affects the environment. It would be crazy for someone to walk into your house and toss trash on your living room floor and then run away, wouldn't it? So why go and do that to the animals we share this planet with? You didn't think you were getting yourself into one of "these type of posts" when you began reading, did ya!

Anyway, my current campus is far from the most sustainable campus in the country, let alone the Gulf Coast region. One of my goals has been to improve the university's status in regards to sustainability. This includes laying the foundation for more recycling on campus, breaking ground on the university's first community garden, and just spreading awareness on the millions of ways one can be more sustainable in their daily lives. It's not all about picking up trash and recyclables outside on the side of the road but I think fulfilling one's own definition of sustainability inherently comes with an interest in preserving the environment. It's an uphill task but perhaps I'll talk more about that in a future entry.

My second passion is empowering women in higher education. I think the term feminist is outdated and stigmatized so I don't call myself a feminist. Instead, more recently a United Nations/Emma Watson-led initiative has made the phrase "he for she" trendy so I'll roll with that. I've studied the history of higher education and learned that higher education has been far from inclusive to anyone who wasn't a white male for much of it's history. Times have since changed of course and higher education has continually become more accessible to people of different genders and ethnicities, partially thanks to several acts that gave incentives (Morrill Land Acts, for example) for more open admission policies or required them (Title IX).

Still, while access has improved, equality still has a ways to go. I care about many women in my life and I like to view every woman I encounter daily as someone else's mother, sister, daughter, wife, girlfriend, etc. I want to see women everywhere treated the same way I would treat a woman in my life. Sadly this is not the case everywhere. However, I find that the progressive nature and tone of many higher education institutions does create an environment that is quite welcome to and celebrates differences in gender. But regardless, as women have been a mistreated portion of the population within higher education for so long I still feel that advocacy is needed. Empowering young female leaders is imperative to the progression of equality in the classroom and workplace if you ask me so I'll gladly lend a hand.

So that's me. As a young SA professional I hope to accomplish two things outside of my normal duties: 1) Make my campus more sustainable and 2) Help create a higher education landscape that is more welcoming to women as students, leaders, educators, and administrators. These pursuits "keep me sane", so to speak, outside of the daily comings and goings of life in SA. Hope you enjoyed the post!

My mantra, thanks to M.A.L.E.S.

I accepted a graduate assistant (GA) position with the housing office at my graduate school after being told I would be able to create student-centered programs and establish traditions. Instead such opportunities to establish traditional-laden programs were few and far between. I felt like I was barely more than a paper pusher in housing who unfortunately had to helplessly watch student after student be forced to move out of housing and back home for academic or financial reasons. By the time I was meeting and conversing with students it was often too late; their fate was sealed and there was nothing I can do to keep them from leaving school It wouldn't be until the start of my second year in grad school that I would find myself in the position to actually help students. That's not how I was taught to lead at my undergraduate institution, Eastern Connecticut State University.

At Eastern I was a member of a student-run organization that was committed to developing young leaders named M.A.L.E.S. which stood for Men Achieving Leadership, Excellence, and Success. I was a minority in this group as I came from a well-off middle class family whereas many of my brothers came from less well-off backgrounds. Despite our different socioeconomic backgrounds a group of young men, over time, formed lifelong bonds. I learned much in my three years as a M.A.L.E.S. member but what I took away the most from my time was that you always have to look out for those close to you. Luckily our advisers were esteemed men on campus, such as the Dean of Students, who would do everything in his power to help myself and the other young men in the organization if they were ever in any danger of having to leave the university for any reason, especially financially.

I could go on and on about how M.A.L.E.S. shaped me both as an individual and as an aspiring professional in Student Affairs but what matters is what was "lost in translation" during my transition from Eastern to the south.

Still, my first couple months as a graduate assistant (GA) went by smoothly. I had limited housing experience as an undergrad but honestly, I feel success in Student Affairs is found when those in any student services office care more about students than the bottom line. That's the way I approached housing but I learned that housing can be prone to placing more emphasis on numbers than people. My mantra has been to put students first because, as a student myself, I always want what's in my best interests.

Housing is very tough though. I felt a certain connection with the residents in my community as I was a recent college graduate and the members of my community were largely from the newest freshman class plus some upperclassmen peppered in here and there. As mentioned earlier, hurts the most is seeing students leaving and feeling as if by the time I was seeing students there was nothing I could do about their situation. That's not what situation that roused my interest in Student Affairs (SA). I wish to help students directly, I want them to know of the services available to them via their tuition dollars, and I want them to be successful. If you're cut from this cloth and have a healthy dose of politics in you so you can manage to secure funding despite strict budgets whenever possible, then I feel you can be successful with SA.

I care about retention but more so on the student-side. I want students to be successful and it hurts me when I see others not helping students when they are in a position to do so. My first year in grad school was one of my hardest years so far but I wouldn't change anything. I learned a lot and I learned where I really wanted to be within SA and what I needed to do to get there.

The "right fit"

As the title suggests, what you think is the "right fit" for you at any given point may not necessarily be the "best fit". I found this to be true as I pursued a graduate assistant (GA) position to defer the costs of my masters degree program. Since I was born and raised in Connecticut I felt that after twenty-two years I may be due for a change of scenery.

Through a "conference" of sorts, I found myself at the Southern Placement Exchange (SPE) in Memphis during the end of February, 2013, before I graduated from my undergraduate institution that following May. At SPE I was given an opportunity to meet with several schools in the timespan of a weekend, much like a career fair format. SPE was known for it's selection of southern schools, especially those in the Gulf Coast Region, with open GA positions. Typically these GA positions were through each university's office of housing and residence life while others may have been in student activities. 

Eventually I found myself very interested in a handful of schools and some schools were equally as interested in employing me. Long story short, I eventually accepted an offer from the University of South Alabama to work as GA in their office of housing and residence life as a Community Director (CD), otherwise known as a Hall Director or Residence Director depending on the institution. 

I thought this was the "right fit" for me. Thought. I was recruited so hard by a CD who was in his first year at the school. The Associate Director of Housing seemed like a very bright man too. I thought I had already found someone I would be able to call a great friend and colleague as well as someone who could be my mentor over time. 

Well I was wrong. Over time I felt like the sales pitch I received at SPE was nothing more than that, a sales pitch. What's the other phrase? Being "sold a bill of goods"? Well if that's it then that's what it felt like to me. The work environment was overly contentious and not what I was expecting. I sought a GA position because I believed it would be my first step into Student Affairs and a career in Higher Education. I believed that a GA position would give me the outlet I sought to truly help fellow college students. Housing certainly isn't for everyone. Perhaps I would have been happier elsewhere but I'll never know.

What I do know is that what I learned from housing cannot be taken away from me. I learned many things that I will take with me throughout my future career. Some good, a lot was bad but a learning experience nonetheless. Until tomorrow, friends. I hope this post helps others who aren't in the best of position realize that they are in no means cemented there. Perhaps tomorrow I will return with more stories of what I learned here and how it will affect my Student Affairs Job Hunt. 

The Student Affairs Job Hunt

Greetings everyone out there!

I've decided to return to this blog even though it was previously dedicated solely to a class assignment. Now I've decided to use it as an outlet and a guide for others to use while on their Student Affairs Job Hunt. I want people to see, read, view the chronicles of a graduate student about to begin his last semester before earning his masters degree in Educational Leadership and Higher Education Administration. There's plenty of ups and downs in search of a Student Affairs position. I've had just as many failures as successes it feels in pursuit of a career in Higher Education. Working with college students is my passion. I developed this passion as a sophomore at my alma mater Eastern Connecticut State University working in our Academic Advising Center as a Peer Adviser. Fast-forward about four years and I find myself in graduate assistant position at the University of South Alabama...SOUTH ALABAMA! I'm a Connecticut guy, what was I thinking heading to Alabama?! You'll learn about that and more in future postings but right now I have a girlfriend who needs some of my attention and would prefer me to put away my laptop for the evening.

Take care everyone!