student affairs

LOVING your work

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This post was co-written by Kristen Abell, Tim St. John and Becca Fick after a lengthy Twitter conversation topic. You might find it cross-posted on their blogs, too.

Lately, we have been noticing several folks tweeting things about “reasons I love my job.” It made us think – are we setting up the expectation that you need to love your job to be good at it? Why can’t we say we enjoy it or like it or find meaning from it and that be enough? It all comes down to false expectations of what we should get from work and what we owe to it as a result. It seems like a very unhealthy relationship. Tim threw the initial question out on Twitter, and a conversation has now bloomed into a blog post.

When/Why did we start treating work as something that could be loved? And is this only something that’s happening online? We wonder whether this professed “love” has more to do with how someone looks online, their personal brand, than their true feelings about work. Maybe some people feel like they have to profess their love for their job in order to be taken seriously as a student affairs professional – as if they have to prove their dedication to the job and to the field.

It’s not a person, it can’t love us back. Why do we put so much into something, and what do we get back from it? This can set people up for failure and/or heartbreak. No job will LOVE you back. You can get fulfillment from it, and you can make an impact, but those do not equal love. It seems that some of us, as higher education professionals, have unrealistic expectations about how our employers and institutions will receive our efforts, our “love” for them. We seem to hear, “Love your job! Be passionate. If you do this, then all your needs will be fulfilled and you will be rewarded.” In reality, a job is a job. Yes, some can be more fulfilling than others, but it won’t love you back.

When you treat work as work, you tend to be a better self-advocate when it comes to promotions, time out of the office, saying no, etc. You also tend to take less of that home with you, knowing it will be there when you go back tomorrow. Are newer professionals even taught this? And who do we look to for our models?

When you are all student affairs all the time, you do a disservice to yourself, to your friends and family and to your students. That’s right – we said your students. Do you think they care if you were thinking about them at 2 a.m. if you can’t help them now because you’re completely exhausted and burned out?

So what do you think about “loving” your job – is it all it’s cracked up to be?

Students, it’s not you. It’s me.

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I feel like I do not understand most of my students. I still like them, a lot. But, I do not understand them. I have often wondered if this phenomena is discipline-specific. It might be. But, I am also learning that something bigger is happening for me= generational shift.

One of the groups of students I advise are accelerated second degree students. They have already earned a bachelor’s degree in another field and are applying to do a nursing degree in 14 months. It’s intense. THEY are intense. In the application process  there are lots and lots and lots of questions. They are high-achieving, high-need, high-touch and labor intensive. Then, after orientation they disappear. I don’t see them until I read their names at graduation. This used to bother me. This used to hurt my feelings.

This morning in our staff meeting we got talking about current students and technology. Today’s students come with technology. They don’t have to learn it (like I did in college when e-mail was just starting). Today’s students also come to college to learn skills to get a job. This is a drastic shift from when I was in college. I was an English major. What else was I going to do but go on to more school? I gladly jumped into a liberal-arts degree having absolutely no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. I just figured that my quality education and the broad thinking and writing I was trained to do would lead me somewhere. (It did. Eventually.)

In our meeting, my supervisor mentioned this article by Allison Slater Tate. I LOVE this article. I wish I had written this article. I could have written this article. I sense that Tate and I are the same age and had similar college/technology experiences. I feel the way she does with my own children. C is asking for an i-pad for Christmas and I am trying to resist.

I can also relate to this article on a professional level. Where she says, “children” I think “students” and “parenting” I think “work.”

When it comes to parenting, I find this middle place extremely uncomfortable, because I know what childhood and adolescence were like before the Internet, and my parenting models all come from that era.

Ahhhh….lightbulbs exploding everywhere!

Students coming to college expecting skills (and if they learn in the process, great) is especially evident with my discipline-specific students. The very nature of the nursing curriculum encourages this. They have to learn certain skills and gain certain experiences to graduate and then to be licensed. Experiential, hands-on, “internship like” experiences are embedded into the curriculum.

My students want and expect information. They want and expect me to provide them with that information. They want information so they can get into a competitive academic program, get the skills they need, and then go on to be what they want to be- nurses. They are not interested in developing relationships with me. There are exceptions, of course. But for the most part, my role is customer service: know what I know, refer out when I don’t, solve problems, and follow-up. (This article from millennialceo.com highlights millennial’s expectations of customer service really well.) This transactional customer relationship is the very opposite of why I got into student affairs (and I guess most of us). And, it is the very opposite of how I approached my own learning. 

Relationships are what I do. Relationships are even in my MBTI type. So, then, how do I reconcile who I am, what I value, and what my strengths are, with my current role which matches very little of those? I am slowly coming around to the idea that what I currently do doesn’t have to match or define who I am. This is a huge shift for me as a professional and as a woman in a female-dominated helping profession. The very core of student affairs is to co-create learning environments with students. Well, some students are not interested. They are who they are. And, my frustration or lack of fit with them is about me. Not them.

I truly am from a different generation. I expected and valued different things as a learner and student. My current students may not value those same things. I need to stop thinking that what I valued as a student was better. It’s not. It’s just different. I am getting it! I need to stop venting and cavetching about students emailing the wrong person or asking me questions that are clearly stated on our website.

They [millennials] do not want to talk through the decision making process with a brand. They may want faster service, but they only want the information they ask for.(Amy Tobin, millennialceo.com)

Ahhhhh. More lightbulbs! When I was a student, I was engaging with the brand. And the brand was the entire college experience. As a student affairs professional in the late 90s, I was also trained to see myself as part of the.brand. My role was to help students engage in the college experience, the brand, and thus, engage with me.

Today’s brand is…not that. I am still figuring out what it is. But, I’m recognizing that it isn’t what I experienced. And, I can offer more than what some of my students are looking for. But, they do not have to want it. They do not have to have the experience that I had. And the sooner I realize that and adjust to them, the better we will both be.

Students, you’re fine. You’re great. I am the old Gen Xer advisor who has been a little slow on the uptake, but I am getting there!

 

 

Shame, Fitting-in and Belonging in Student Affairs

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On Tuesday I attended a mini-conference on my campus. One of the break-out sessions I chose was on shame resilience; based on Brene Brown’s work on shame and vulnerability. The presenter did an excellent job of breaking down Brown’s research into smaller, more manageable pieces and then relating them to behaviors that are evidenced in the academy. I took copious notes. Then, yesterday I watched both of Brown’s TED talks and took more notes. It wasn’t until I attended the shame session and watched the TED talks that something clicked.

My heart is racing as I write this and my body is getting hot inside- my physiological reaction to vulnerability… But here it is….

I have been working to fit-in when I should have been striving to find places where I belong.

I have followed the appropriate career trajectories, attended the best graduate schools, earned a terminal degree, presented at conferences. I blog and tweet, blah blah blah. And, I am still spinning my wheels. I still feel as if I don’t belong here.

Shame is about: fear, blame, and disconnection

Empathy is about: courage, compassion, and connection

Shame is fitting in. Empathy is belonging.

As a strong, direct, honest, feminist, I have been shamed almost my entire career. And, many many times by other women. I have been called direct, abrasive, aggressive, sarcastic, etc., etc. I have been called these things by people who do not know me, have never worked with me, or seen me work with others.

“You’re so negative.” Not my behavior or presentation, or my style, but me personally, my character. Me. Brown says that shame is personal while guilt is behavioral. Shame- “I am bad. I am negative. I am aggressive.” Guilt- “I did something negative. I said something negative.”

“Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me” is a lie. Words matter. Words are powerful. Who says them to us and when and why and how matters. It all matters. Those who know me well know that I have been struggling with my professional identity for some time. I can’t reconcile others’ perceptions/feedback of me with how I see myself, with who I believe that I am at my core.

Have I done or said negative things? Sure. Am I sometimes aggressive? Of course. I am human. I make mistakes. I am a learner who is still learning. I also do these things because I care. Because I am loyal and focused and driven and I want my students and our organizations to be better. My doing these sometimes negative things doesn’t make me negative or not enough. It makes my behavior not good enough (maybe).

Feedback is supposed to be about behavior, attitude, skills, performance. Not about someone’s core, their identity. Every one is important and special and valuable and they can still be all of those things even in the face of mistakes or poor performance. Feedback should employ a little guilt, but never shame. I think in the past people have shamed me when they were trying to make me feel guilty.

I have been shamed and I should not have been. We can do better. I can do better. I saw and felt it happening and I let it continue. I have seen it happen to colleagues and friends. I have witnessed it and said nothing. And, I know that in the academy we shame students.

To the students, fellow staff, parents or any others whom I may have shamed, I am sorry. To all of those who have shamed me, I forgive you.

I believe that shaming is related to student affairs “burn-out.” I’ve always thought of burn-out as running on empty, fumes. You cannot give to others what you do not have within yourself first. Perhaps we burn-out because we shame each other into thinking that who we are is not enough.

I wonder what our profession would look like if we all took a long, hard, look at ourselves and acknowledged the times when we have shamed and been shamed. What would happen if we all committed to doing better?

I will keep searching until I find where I belong. And I will be bringing all of me.