Balance

I can't believe we have only one week and a couple of days left until Spring Break. I'm looking forward to Spring Break, even though I'm not taking any time off (I'm trying to save vacation days for the summer). But that week will give me a chance to catch up on some work, get ahead on some other things and be able to leave the office at a reasonable time. It'd be nice to get back home around 5 or 6 pm. Usually, I don't get back home until 10 or 11 pm - sometimes even later than that. There are just too many meetings and events at night. But the thing is, those are the things that are fun.

My supervisor recently did my 6-month evaluation and, not very surprisingly, she commented on how I need to work on balance. I mean, she's right. I don't really have balance. I had all these plans at the beginning of the year - I was thinking about dance lessons or voice lessons or joining a choir or something like that; and then I just got busy. First semester, I was teaching our learning community class Monday evening, Tuesday evenings I had RHA, Area Council and Global Council meetings, Wednesdays we had staff meeting, and Thursdays I had some evening office hours and that was also usually the night we had programs and when the Invisible Children organization met. At the beginning of this semester, I wanted to limit the evenings when I have to work. At first things looked pretty promising. I wanted to work Tuesday and Wednesday nights and have Mondays and Thursdays to myself; but somehow that just didn't work. First, Area Council decided to change their meeting day to Thursdays. The RHA bid team meets Monday evenings. There are programs, random meetings and and and.

So then I decided not to start working until noon, since I was usually out and about that late. Sometimes that works out. But then there are days when we have morning meetings. Or sometimes I just can't fit all the meetings with students and colleagues into the evening, so I myself decide to schedule a meeting in the morning. Sigh. But it's definitely gotten a little better; there are days I sleep in until 10 am or even 11 am - not often, but even once a week is pretty amazing. :)

After getting my evaluation, I took some time to look at my schedule to see if there was anything I could cut. But the tough part is that the things I could potentially cut, are the ones that I like the most - like Global Council meetings or some of the programs my students have been organizing and helping RHA with their bid. Those are the things that don't even feel like work but are simply FUN.

And my students have been pretty damn amazing lately. Global Council made our student newspaper twice within the last week. They've pulled together some pretty awesome events with very little direction. Two of them are planning our End of the Year Banquet and they've been going way above and beyond expectations - from the beautiful invitations to planning to make awesome decorations. It's going to be a wonderful banquet.

I should probably still try to have a bit more balance in my life - maybe by actually following through on some of the plans I had - but it's hard to say no to students and it's even harder to say no when working with them is so much fun!

From undergrad to grad to professional

Interview days for our grad program are coming up and as always that's gotten me to start thinking about the transitions we go through - from undergrad to grad and then to being a professional staff member. And what can we, as supervisors, do to help our students make that transitions?

I sometimes see students start a graduate program and continue to live like an undergraduate. Their habits, what they do in their free time - nothing changes much.
I've also seen new professionals start that first job and do the same thing - continue to go out and socialize as they did as a grad student, possibly similar to what they did as an undergraduate.

But shouldn't there be a difference?

As an undergraduate, I was a student leader - but I still did "stupid" undergraduate things. You could often find me at the bar with my friends. I didn't drink - not really for any deep, meaningful reason; I just don't really like the taste - but I was there and quite often, you could find me dancing on the table or acting silly. Yes, I tried to be a role model and the few times I did drink, I made sure not to get drunk and act irresponsible - I also tried to look out for my friends when I was out with them and made sure nobody else ended up in the hospital or drove home drunk. And yes, many weekends I was also busy with student leader type things and was working late or catching up on homework; and I often had more fun just hanging out in the RA office than I did when we went out (a lot less drama and way more comfortable clothes...haha). But like I said, I was out there - doing the "college thing".
I was also an RA - and as an RA, I was close with many of my residents. Yes, there was a line but it was pretty blurry.

Then I became a graduate student. I don't think I ever consciously changed my behavior; I just became the overinvolved, super busy graduate student that didn't have time to go out and engage in that type of behavior. And I didn't really miss it.
I once again was close with many students and that line was still pretty blurry - especially considering how close I was with many of them.

And then my first few years as a professional - I struggled, trying to make friends but not willing to engage in certain behaviors and attend certain outings. And for the first time, I was really consciously making the choice not to attend some of these events. I'm not sure when I made that decision - but I just had this uncomfortable feeling in my stomach / I guess I just knew it wasn't a smart thing to do. And the few times I let my colleagues drag me out to the bars, something always happened to make me remember why I don't like to be there. Like a highly intoxicated underage resident stopping me on the street to ask me academic advising questions; and while I was trying to get the student to move on for now and come to my office the next day, I also had to worry about my colleagues giggling and clearly showing that they were just as intoxicated.
I also struggled with going out with graduate students. How can I sit there and get drunk with you and then tomorrow "supervise" you and write your evaluation? If it had been a question of going out to eat and having a beer or some sort of drink with the meal, that'd be one thing - but we all know in the American bar scene, the alcohol isn't part of the experience - it's the main focus of the experience.
However, choosing not to go out often made me feel isolated and I didn't develop close friendships with colleagues. And so I found my social outlet somewhere else - in my building, with my staff. Which of course let to a whole other set of questions regarding the line between my RAs and me and things became more than just blurry. I was fortunate though because I had some amazing RAs, who could handle hanging out and watching movies with me one night but still respect me as their supervisor and take good feedback the next day.

So what does it mean to be professional? There is no guidebook; there aren't any rules. Every professional would probably give you a different answer. But I think it's important that we think about these things - think about what "acting professionally" means to us and then make those decisions consciously and based on our values and believes, rather than just stumble through them.

And I think, as we work with our graduate students, we need to find ways to get them to think about these topics and figure out what it means for them to be a professional - or at least to start figuring it out (because I'm afraid it's one of those topics you'll have to keep thinking about throughout your entire career).

Student organizations & Thank You's

I've been going to the meetings of the Invisible Children organization on campus all year, since we are collaborating on my weekend program. This entire time, I haven't seen their advisor once. Occasionally I've wanted to step in and say something - as an advisor - but I've tried to restrain myself. I didn't want to fall into the role of an advisor. But I've slowly had the suspicion that one day, they would ask me to be their advisor - and I didn't know what I would say.
And here's the funny part: I voiced that suspicion to a colleague and just a few hours later, at an Invisible Children Meeting, they asked me if I would consider being their advisor. And I didn't know what to say. It wouldn't be until next year. And it's not that I don't want to - I'd love to - but I also have a lot of other things on my plate and I'm already advising an Area Council and our Global Council and I'd love to maybe advise RHA or NRHH again next year because I miss working with those student groups.

Talking about RHA, I've been getting a little more involved with them as well. They're thinking about hosting a regional conference next Fall and are right now in the middle of preparing their bid. And since I have some experience in bidding for conferences from undergrad, I offered my help. And now I'm going to weekly bid team meetings and I love it. I've missed being involved with RHA. And I love conferences! But I worry about stepping on the toes of the RHA advisors. And I wonder how much that will take over my life if they get the bid - or "when" they get the bid (they don't like it when I say "if"). ;)

It's weird though - I've been feeling oddly appreciated lately and I'm just not used to it. :) Invisible Children told me that they appreciate all I do and that's why they want me to be their advisor. RHA members have thanked me for helping out with preparing the bid. Recently I sent out e-mails to all the students, who had a great GPA last semester or who improved their GPA, to congratulate them; I also sent out e-mails to those who didn't do so well and offered help. And I've gotten quite a few e-mails back thanking me for caring.

I never know what to do with thank-you's. I appreciate them and they make me feel good :) - but I guess I just don't know what to say. And I feel a little weird because shouldn't it be "normal" that I care - not just because I'm a Hall Director but because I'm a human being and we should all care about each other.

Snow Days Suck!

We've had WAYYYYY too many snow days this semester already. We started off with a snow day - so much for that first day of classes (a Tuesday). The second week, we had a snow day on Thursday. And then this week, we had Tuesday and Wednesday off.

Snow Days were great when you were a student - they aren't all that exciting now that I'm a staff member. When I wake up in the morning and see that e-mail telling me that it's a snow day, a tiny part of me still cheers. I'm not sure why - maybe it's just because we've been socialized to think that snow days are awesome; or it's the memories of being excited about snow days. But for me, a snow day doesn't change much. Hall Directors are emergency personnel. So I still have to go to the office. Meetings with residents of the building still take place. Maybe a few meetings with other offices and our central staff are cancelled, but that doesn't significantly free up my schedule; especially not this week that's been crammed with RA Interviews and preparing for programs. And honestly, not having those meetings is sometimes way more frustrating than it'd be to lose the time that the meeting would take up.

I feel pretty disconnected from the rest of campus and the central office because I haven't had a one-on-one with my supervisor in a while and now we are not having our staff meeting tomorrow. I also have a list of offices that I really need to talk to but haven't been able to because they've been closed.

On Tuesday, we had our Invisible Children Challenge Kick-off event (in spite of the snow day) and attendance was somewhat limited because of the weather. And then I started getting all these e-mails from students who were interested in coming but couldn't make it because of the snow. And it's AWESOME that they are interested in the Challenge, but this means I now have to organize another Kick-off Event - and for that I have to reserve a room in the Student Union, which means I need the Reservations Office to be open, so I can contact them, and it also means more work for me.

Snow days also mean that our students are hanging out and are getting bored. Some of them are "just bored" and they've been coming down to hang out in the office or have been going through my personal DVD collection; those are "the good ones." The others have decided to use the extra free time to make a lot of noise - before and after quiet hours - have parties and get drunk. We've had serious increases in policy violations on and around the snow days. This is NOT how I wanted to start the semester off. Soon I'll have had more violations in these first few weeks than I had all last semester.

So let's all keep our fingers crossed that this was it for snow days!