Welcome to April!

When I was a kid, I used to love April. My birthday is in April. The weather is usually getting a little bit better and it's getting warmer - you can feel the excitement and energy of Spring in April. In Austria, the Easter Holidays are usually in April, which meant a week + of vacation, traveling and quality time with my family. April was simply AWESOME!!!

But these days, April is NOT my favorite month. By April, I'm usually just ready for the semester to be over. All those little issues with your staff that have been annoying you all year long suddenly are very tough to handle. Everything that didn't work out the way you wanted to that year is building up and you're just ready for a fresh start with a new group of students, a new group of staff members and new energy and enthusiasm. The staff is also tired and stressed, busy with getting ready for finals and planning last events for their student organizations. Students have set routines and are stressed as well and therefore unlikely to come to events and programs. April is the month of banquets (which sounds fun but after a while is just a lot of extra time); April is the month of weekends where you have to work; April is the month where you are so close to the end of the acadmeic year but there's still so much left to do.

If the rest of the month will be similar to April 1, it's going to be a tough month. I came back from ACPA Wednesday, March 30th, in the evening and went straight to the office and then a student organization meeting. Thursday, March 31, I tried to catch up on work but wasn't very successful as I was constantly being interrupted. In the evening, I was supposed to pick up a friend/the headliner for our Invisible Children Benefit Concert on April 1 - the drive was about an hour. I was going to leave around 9 pm, but then things happened and I ended up talking to a student and finally it was ridiculously late. It was also snowing like crazy outside; I could barely see where I was driving. And I didn't get there until about midnight and that's when April 1, a day that could give me nightmares, started. I didn't get back home until about 2 am, then still needed to take care of a few things for work and then finally crashed. I woke up early to get to the office, started off with some important phone calls and then settled down to do the things that should have been done the day before. Meetings with students in between, trying to catch up on the most important e-mails (at one point, my inbox was at 150 e-mails...yikes!!!) and the day was flying by. I still had to create sign-sheets and other materials for the concert, figure out what I was going to say and which videos to show and and and. But every time I settled down to do that, a student stopped by or my phone rang. Then, at 4 pm, as I'm finally trying to put the last finishing touches on my concert prep, I get a phone call about a roommate conflict in an area I'm covering (because the Hall Director is out of town). So I met with the two students, trying to figure out what had been happening in this roommate conflict that has been going on for weeks and that another staff member had been dealing with. Finally I thought I had a solution for the weekend, so I sent the students on their way. One of them was still super upset, so I gave her my cell so she could call in case of an emergency this weekend. I know, not a smart choice, but I didn't know what else to do and needed to get her to stop crying so I could get off the phone and focus on all the other things I needed to do.

At 7:15 pm, I was throwing the last things in the bag I was taking with me and was about to head up to my apartment to get our headliner and drive over to the concert venue - when, of course, my phone rang. It was the father of the students involved in the roommate conflict and there were new issues. I told my Assistant Hall Director to get the musicans over to the venue and start setting up and then I ran out the door to deal with this situation. About 20 minutes later, everything was settled and I ran over to the venue myself. While running I called several people to catch them up on the situation. I showed up at the venue, breathless, exhausted and stressed. We set up and got ready. At first things seemed to be working out. But then the tech guys were having issues getting the sound for the videos to work. They also didn't know much about the soundboard they were supposed to be working with, which frustrated our musicians. To make a long story short, we started not the 15-minutes late that I had planned in (to allow for people to get there) but 35-minutes late. And because the computer couldn't play sound, I couldn't even play some music while people were sitting there waiting. I was so frustrated. We also didn't have the turnout I was hoping for. We had about 50 people; not bad but just not what I was hoping for and in a venue set up for 180 people, it looked a bit miserable. And I mean, my last Invisible Children Challenge, I had over 100 people at the event and that was at a smaller school. But we had more teams back then and more excited staff members working on the event. I don't think I did a good job at getting our staff involved and excited this year. I struggled with recruiting teams and then we just didn't get a chance to advertise as much for the event than I did last time around. It's also harder here to advertise because regulations about what you can do on campus are strict - so no poster-trees or Africa-shaped banners. :( We had also planned on tabling outside the Student Union the last two days before the concert but then the weather messed with those plans. Sigh. Oh well, next year, we'll be back - bigger and better! :) Some of my students, who were there, told me that they really enjoyed the event - which I guess is what's most important. And now we've done it here once and we know what some of the problems are that we need to work around next time. But yes, April 1 was definitely not my day. Let's hope the rest of the month goes better (even though I'm not feeling too confident right now).