choice

Finding a partner you can move on “with,” not from

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June 12
What was the best decision you ever made?
Niki

The best decision I ever made was to have a “relationship defining talk” with a co-worker whom I thought I was starting to have feelings for.

I had no idea that when I took my first “real” student affairs job in 1999 that it would lead me to my best friend. I had never even heard of Hope College or Holland, MI. Heck, back then, I am not really sure I could have correctly placed Michigan on a map. But, I got heavily recruited at a professional conference, interviewed, got the job, etc. etc. Second year into the position, one of my co-workers and my only friend in the entire state of Michigan leaves me! Her leaving set the process in motion to hire another hall director. We interview a bunch of candidates and Sean is one of them. The only thing I remember about his interview was that he had a lot of experience and nice eyes.

We spent almost every day together the first weeks of the semester. RA training, meetings, fire drills, crappy cafeteria food (breakfast, lunch, and dinner), meetings, meetings. You really get to know someone pretty well when you are in all those meetings! Sean is also Catholic, so we went to church together and bonded over being the only Catholic people in tall, white, blonde, Reformed, Dutch, West Michigan.

One weekend I went away to see my sister play soccer. The whole drive back to Holland, I thought about how I needed and wanted to talk to Sean to tell him about it and to tell him I was back safe. Call him up. He was waiting for me to call, too. Huh. We work together. We work together all the time at a really small conservative institution. Huh.

One week later we are driving to a mall (I don’t even remember what for) and I tell him that I think we are flirting with each other. That I think I like him. That I think he likes me, too. But also that I don’t want to read into anything. He turns to me and says, “I like you. Read into that.” Best relationship defining talk ever.

10.5 years later we are still together and have faced some challenging times (see next answer below). There is no one else I want to walk with along the way.

June 10
What was your hardest parenting or partner moment?
Dana

When I first read this, I honestly thought that my answer would be our son’s cancer diagnosis. Devastating. Crushing. Life-altering. However, that has not been the hardest part. For me, the hardest part has been the “moving on” into the world of cancer survivorship and the “off-treatment” life.

Our son is a cancer survivor.

Or, our son is a CANCER survivor.

Or, our son is a cancer SURVIVOR.

The moving-on has been harder than I thought. For me, the off-treatment life has been a constant negotiation of vigilance and paranoia; and whichever one I choose depends on the day. A cough is not a cough. When my son gets a fever or a stomachache, I panic and I must choke the waves back down or I will drown. Sometimes I feel like there is too much cancer in my life. Sometimes I have bouts of “survivor guilt” because our son made it and so many others do not. Other days, I am madder than hell and I don’t feel guilty at all because every child diagnosed should have the chance to survive.

My husband is kind, patient, hard-working, funny, passionate, devoted, loyal, and an optimist. I am some of those things and a slightly pessimistic realist. His focus is truly on the moving on. He believes and acts as if you can move on without forgetting. I know he is right. I know that I can have our experience with the C word shape and mold me, but not define me. I just don’t know how or where to go. Yet.

What you do speaks so loudly, that I cannot here what you say

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This is the post that I submitted to the Women in Student Affairs (WISA) blog.

Growing up, my mother used to say this all the time. Like most children, I rolled my eyes and walked away. Now, I am the mother. I am also a wife; PhD; advocate for childhood cancer awareness, funding, and research; an academic specialist/advisor at an amazing Big Ten University; and a mid-career, higher education professional who is still trying to figure out who and what she wants to be when she grows up. In these roles that I negotiate, people are watching how I behave and paying less attention to what I say. On a cognitive level, I know this. In parenting and in student affairs, we lovingly refer to this as “the fish bowl effect.” We live in a glass bowl where our words, actions, and mistakes occur out in the open for all of the world to see and to judge.

It is one thing to know that people are watching me and it is quite another to let that knowledge influence my choices. My two young sons are watching everything I do. Every choice I make, whether intentionally or unintentionally, sends them a message about the choices and sacrifices I am willing to make for them and our family. My choices also show them how much I value myself and my own well-being.

I finished my doctoral studies in August 2010 and immediately began searching for “the next step” position. I had the credentials, the requisite years of experience, and the desire to be a mid-level, mid-career professional. I applied for many, many positions. On the recommendation of some colleagues, I applied for and was offered a Director-level position at a small, Catholic school. I bought some new professional clothes. With my degree in hand and self-righteous assuredness, off I went to my next step. I had made it!

I worked hard. I met some wonderful colleagues. I got to teach a first-year seminar course. I was a voting member of six or seven different university committees. I managed a quarter of a million dollar operating budget and I supervised five professional staff. On paper, it is the next step position.

That is what it looked like on the outside. On the inside, I was tired. All the time. I was spending three hours a day in my car. On a bad day in the snow, it was more like five hours. I was not exercising, ever. I never ate breakfast with my boys. I missed almost every event at their school. I missed my husband and my children. I had severely underestimated the physical, emotional, and financial toll that commuting would take on me and my family.

Worst of all, I wasn’t being true to myself because I wasn’t bringing everything I could to each of my roles. I was not living with integrity. I said to myself and to anyone who would listen that my family was most important. But, my life was not letting me be with them. When I walked in the door at 530pm every night, one of my sons would not speak to me because he suddenly realized that I wasn’t there before and he was mad. I am sure it felt like I was never there. It felt that way to me, too. Yet, every chance I got, I was touting myself as an example of someone who was successfully negotiating mid-career, family, and personal interests/passions. I was openly advocating for working mothers and mid-career professionals, “Look, I am doing it! So can you!”

Integrity is defined as: 1) adherence to moral and ethical principles, soundness of moral character, honesty; 2) the state of being whole, entire, or undiminished; and 3) a sound, unimpaired, perfect condition. I was not living a life of integrity. I was not being honest with myself or my employer. I was certainly not in a state of being whole, and I was not in perfect condition.

In November, I accepted a position at a university ten minutes from my house. I let go of my Director-level position. I gave up my seat at the Alice Manicur Symposium; hopefully another mid-level, mid-career professional was able to go and get from it all that she could. I no longer commute. I exercise at lunch now. The other day I helped a young woman with her resume and I introduced her to Twitter. These things do not make me a hero. But, they are little things that I am doing to re-align my words and my actions.

I eat breakfast with my boys every morning. Some days, I take my children to school. I am re-connecting with other working moms. When I get home, both of my boys greet me at the door and we go play, because I can. I have the time and mental energy to blog and tweet and volunteer with childhood cancer organizations about which I am passionate. I made choices that work for me and I am doing the best I can to actively live in to those choices. I am happier than I have been in almost two years.

Who is watching you? Your supervisees. Your supervisor. Your children. Your partner. Maybe a new professional is watching you and wondering if the student affairs “lifestyle” is really something s/he wants. Maybe it is a mid-career professional who is deciding between taking the leap to the “next position” and leaving the profession altogether. What are your choices telling others about who and what you value? Are you living with integrity?

Life is indeed a trade-off, a constant negotiation of roles, responsibilities, and choices. Turns out, my mother was right. What people do speaks volumes about who they are and who they value. I need to parent, lead, and work with integrity. There are two very important people watching me.

Bio
-Monica Marcelis Fochtman, Ph.D. is an academic specialist at Michigan State University. She is married with two young children. She also volunteers with the St. Baldrick’s Foundation, raising money and awareness for childhood cancer research.

Connect with Monica on Twitter: at @monicamfochtman or email mfochtman@hc.msu.edu

10 things I will (probably) never do

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Happy New Year everyone! As I continue to slowly dip my toe in the water of blogging, I am cheating and using some prompts from other people. There is a website called http://reverbbroads.blogspot.com/ where they posted a list of writing prompts for every day in December. As you can tell, I am very behind! Actually, most of the prompts felt too much like homework. And since I am done with my PhD, homework is no longer part of my life! Whew! However, the prompt for December 6 was intriguing to me and I continued to come back to it as I thought about what to write for the New Year. So, here it is, my list of “10 things I would never do.”

1. Never say never. The world of childhood cancer taught me that the world of absolutes does not exist. And, I have already done things that I never thought I would: shaved my head, connected with other momcologists in deep and profound ways, started a blog….

2. Go skydiving. I am afraid of heights and if I ever had that kind of disposable income, I am not going to waste it jumping out of some plane praying that my chute will open.

3. Never buy another Volkswagen. EVER.

4. Spend five years with an unreliable car that I hate. Not worth the emotional and physical stress.

5. Take a job where I have to commute more than 30 minutes one way. From December 2010 to November 2011, I drove 126 miles each day to get to work. Great position (I was a Director), great people, great students. But, the toll it took on me, my health, my family, my car, and my wallet were very taxing. Still recovering.

6. I will never go another year without some sort of regular exercise routine. See number 5.

7. Go back to school for a degree. There is a reason the PhD is called “terminal.” Happy to be a student for fun, but for grades, no way!

8. I will never say to another momcologist, grieving parent, or friend, “I can’t imagine how you feel.” Or, “I don’t know how you do it.” These words, to me, are patronizing. They put distance between the person saying them and the person receiving them. It is as if the person saying them is really saying, “Thank God you are experiencing that and not me or my kid.” I didn’t choose to have a son with cancer. We were drafted. Our choice was to fight like hell and win.

9. I will never say to another momcologist, grieving parent, or friend, “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.” BS. I am a person of deep faith. I believe in God. I believe that God died for me and for my sins. But, I do not and never will, believe that God causes children to suffer or that God gives us our sufferings to teach us a lesson. The universe is random (more on this in a future post) and bad things happen to good people. And, there are in fact many people out there who have “more than they can handle.” This is why we must pay it forward and help where we can.

10. I will never not have a big mouth and strong opinions. This is my curse. I say what I think. Sometimes, I do it in the wrong place at the wrong time. I am getting better at apologizing for those times. This is also my gift. I will spend the rest of my life using my big mouth and my strong opinions to fight and advocate for children with cancer, increasing awareness and raising money for pediatric-specific research. Awareness=funding=research=cures.