Mid-Career

Self-Advocacy While on the Student Affairs Path

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THANK YOU to The Student Affairs Collective for the opportunity to share my experiences as a mid-career professional. You can see the original post here

During a recent #sachat about leaving student affairs, I posted this final thought: “you have every right to advocate for yourself, family, personal, mental, and financial health. If that means leaving, so be it.”

I am hesitant to publicly state that I want to leave. It seems so final. And I fear that by declaring my intentions, I will become invisible to colleagues and friends or worse, that my current efforts will be discounted because I lack stamina. In reality, these possibilities are remote. But, they feel real to me personally. I have devoted my entire “career” to higher education. It is all I know. If I leave, what the heck would I do? And, didn’t I spend a lot of time, money, and energy earning a terminal degree in this field? Where can I go where I can contribute to a team in a meaningful way and where my degree and experience would be valued?

Like many mid-career professionals, I am at a crossroads. As has been discussed before, to move up the ranks, I would have to move out. This means either relocating to another part of the country (not possible for us right now), or actively pursuing more advanced roles at my current institution. Both of these choices would require a significant lifestyle change in terms of the amount of time required to do the job well. Ideally, moving up would also mean a salary increase or some other form of compensation. But, if I am honest with myself, I am not sure that the modest salary increase would be “worth” the extra time required.

So, here I am: 15 years of experience in different functional areas at different institutions, Ph.D. prepared, and feeling lonely. What should I be when I grow up? From my doctoral research about the work-life strategies used by mid-career women in student affairs, I know that I am not alone. This sense of career path instead of career trajectory is a common one for women and especially for women with children. Yet, I am hesitant to make the leap and try something else. We advocate for students. We teach them how to advocate for themselves. I believe that we also need to advocate for ourselves. This gets tricky for most of us, myself included, because in student affairs we are supposed to love what we do. That love is supposed to be enough fuel for the long haul. Most of us probably didn’t get started in this profession for the residence hall director salary or glamorous lifestyle. In the beginning, it was about students and relationships. On many levels it still is about students and relationships. But, at mid-career, it has also become about paperwork, politics and red tape.

My desire to change the system from within has been tempered by the reality that higher education is slow to change and often resists outsiders with new ideas. My final thought from #sachat is true. All of us have the right to advocate for ourselves and our own well-being. This means me, too. I am quite comfortable advocating for the student organizations I advise and more than once I have encouraged my colleagues to create proposals asking for conference funding or time away. Now, at mid-career, I need to turn those advocacy efforts inward and advocate for myself. Since the Twitter chat, I have devoted serious time to thinking about how to use my training and experience and leverage them to make the next right step for me and my family.

There are ways to stay connected to higher education and college students without being part of a student affairs division. Maybe that means combining my true passion for childhood cancer awareness with my higher education experience and helping foundations recruit students as fundraisers or campus ambassadors. Maybe it means starting a coaching or consulting side business. Maybe it means another lateral move or truly taking all of my vacation days next year. What I said before about higher education being all I know, that’s not really true. And, it’s not true for you, either. We have a tendency to undersell our gifts and talents because so much of our work is behind the scenes. Let’s advocate for ourselves and stop doing that.

As a Ph.D. prepared professional, a mid-career administrator, mother and advocate, I know how to get stuff done. The skills that helped me negotiate a doctoral program, our son’s treatment, and my career thus far are the same skills I will take with me when I go. In student affairs, the typical timeline for career ascension is somewhat clear: Master’s degree-first job-Assistant Director-Director-VP. There is no roadmap for leaving. And leaving doesn’t have to mean forever. It could just mean that it is what’s next. I am trying to be patient and think in short-term achievable goals, rather than an all-out career leap. It’s a path not a trajectory.

Practice makes…good enough

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I’ve been doing yoga lately. On Tuesday it’s “Basic Yoga” with Hannah (pronounced Hah-nah like Ah-nah but with an H in front) and on Wednesdays it’s “Yogalates” with Scott. No interesting pronunciations there and sadly, no lattes either. “Yogalates” is half yoga and half pilates. I’ve never had a male yoga instructor before either. He’s very zen. But not in an over the top way at all. And, he has a tiny little gut that hangs out of his tank top. It makes me like him more.

Both of these classes kick my butt and my mind in the best ways possible.

I have actually done yoga and pilates off and on for years. Prenatal yoga was an absolute necessity for me and pilates helped me get some of my pre-baby body back. I always seem to find my way back to yoga. And when I do, I am always like, “Oh, yeah! This is why I come back.” I love yoga. This cracks me up because yoga is the complete opposite of everything I think of myself: fast-paced, sharp-tongued, east coast, impatient. Yoga is none of those things. And that is why I love it.

At first, I was hesitant to take a “basic” course because I’ve done yoga before and I was like “I’ve done this before, I don’t need basics!” Then, the first day of class, and every day since then, I have fallen more in love with “basic” yoga. Hannah is always telling us, “don’t let anyone tell you that basic yoga is not hard. It’s hard to focus on one thing. To actually stand there and work on one muscle at a time. And tomorrow, you will feel it.”

Basic means you focus on one part of your body the entire class. Last week it was shoulders. Today it was hips. We do maybe three or four different poses. But in each one, you focus. It’s hard work to stand or sit and only focus on one thing. One thing! You breathe. You stretch. You strengthen. You practice. I love this about yogis (Am I allowed to say that? I’m not a yogi, so I hope I am not breaking some cardinal rule here.). They are always saying, “the practice of yoga” or, “today in your practice, focus on this.”

Practice. Isn’t that a lovely concept? Not mastery or perfection. Practice. Get out there. Put yourself out there. Try. Fall down. Get back up.

I love yoga because it is one of the only judgment free zones in my life. I don’t judge anyone who is there, ever. And I don’t judge myself. Yoga provides the time, space, and place for me to practice. Practice breathing, standing up straight with my shoulders back and heart center open. I am not sure about you, but spending hours in front a computer pretty much guarantees that my shoulders are kissing my ears by 830am and they don’t come back down until 530pm, if they come down at all. That 50 minutes at lunch is all about me and my body. Listening to what it is telling me. I am learning to listen back and not push muscles (or thoughts) that shouldn’t be pushed. And, areas that can be stretched a little bit more each time.

Today, Hannah threw out this gem that has stuck with me all day: “They say that shoulder and neck tension is the most recent. As you go further down your spine, the tensions are older. So by the time you reach your lower back that would be the oldest tension.” Whoa. I’ve had lower back pain since 2001. That’s a lot of holding on to stuff.

I have also been thinking of student affairs practice. I remember in graduate school the word practice got used a lot. I remember writing essays about my philosophy as a student affairs practitioner (rooted in the word practice). As a mid-career professional, I feel pressure to have it all figured out and am no longer allowed to practice. Practice means doing the same thing over and over and over again, until it clicks and becomes innate rather than forced. Practice means making mistakes. I know I made at least one mistake today. Tomorrow, I will go to work and hopefully not make the same one again. I am going to practice.

Beginnings

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The day before Thanksgiving my husband and I were able to visit the institution where we each got our start in student affairs and where we met and fell in love. The trip provided an opportunity to reflect on all we have been through, professionally and personally.

Residence life at a small, private institution was a great place to start my professional career. It was my first time supervising. I learned how to physically manage a new-construction building and all its idiosyncrasies. I served as a judicial hearing officer for the most “active” residence hall on campus and thus, had the largest caseload of all my colleagues. As a young and energetic professional, I also volunteered for any and all assignments that would give me experiences and skills outside of my functional area. As such, I advised funding board and several student organizations. I can budget with the best of them. Because of these experiences I was able to transition to student activities| leadership when I moved to my second professional position. For three years, I worked long and hard hours. I said yes, a lot. I created new programs and events and I took risks.

In the span of a career, three years isn’t that much. But it’s not nothing. Visiting the institution where I got my start reminded me of all of these things. It was wonderful to visit with colleagues and mentors and to chat with the VP| Dean who saw something in me and offered me that first job. I think too often in my work, I am so focused on the next step, the next move, that I underestimate what it took to get where I am today. I would guess that I am not alone in this. Life’s messages seem to be telling us that more is better, that to strive for something different or higher or more prestigious is “the” way to be. It is good to have goals. But, in working towards those goals, I think it’s important to take the time to reflect on where I’ve been.

Nice to meet you! Name tags & lanyards from a career well-lived

Nice to meet you! Name tags & lanyards from a career well-lived

We all have beginnings. I am grateful that my beginning in this profession was a good one. I look back at that time fondly and with gratitude. I would love to hear about your beginnings. Where did you start? How has that position shaped who you are today?

In the second year of my first professional job I fell in love with a coworker. We worked together, we were both Catholic, and he made me laugh. He still makes me laugh. Every day. Since that first date in September of 2000, we’ve been through a lot. More than most couples our age. We dated for two years while under the microscope of a full-time, live-in position. We survived a long-distance engagement and job search process. We have survived eight job changes, graduate school, unemployment, and parenthood. We shepherded our son through a major health crisis, all while staying married and keeping our younger son healthy and normal.

When we began though, we were young, excited, and full of hope. When you think about it, really, we knew very little about each other. I think this is the case for most people. In the span of a married life, there is no way to predict what will come your way. I certainly never thought that I would mother a child through cancer. The only thing that indicates future behavior is past behavior. I think we are lucky and grateful that our past, our beginning, was a good one. We are loyal, honest and we like being with each other. That’s how we started and that is what we keep working for now.

Driving through the small town where we shopped for a coffee table (that we still have), had our first kiss, first fight, first jobs, first everything reminded me of our sweet beginning.

Hope College, Holland MI

Hope College, Holland MI