Job Hunt: Infinity

Today I attended and presented at a conference. One you probably haven't heard of. It ran from 9am-around 3:15. It included 3 sets of sessions, an opening key note, and lunch. The sessions offered a pretty wide variety of topics. The main theme (note: not  a theme to which adhere, but which the entire conference was focused on) was leadership education, meaning those working with student leaders. The conference attendance was small compared to big NASPA, less than 100 people.

Career Sustainability I currently work in a position that is not part of a career ladder. I am considered support staff, so there is no clear path for me to make it to a “professional” position. Even if I were to be hired as an advisor, there is no path from there. You can be promoted to Senior Advisor, but (from what I can tell) there isn’t much difference. Even if you work in a position that is part of a career ladder, that ladder gets considerably thinner (and harder to attain) as you move up. There is only one SSAO (maybe) at each institution, we all can’t be SSAOs, it just isn’t possible. When we make the choice to stay in higher ed, when we choose to take part in ladder climbing, we need to be very realistic about what that means. We also need to understand that some people are going to leave student affairs, and that’s totally okay. Again, not all of us can be SSAOs. The big problem is, when is our profession not sustainable? When are we educating too many professionals for too ...

I took vacation time to attend and paid for everything with my own money My roommate reached out to me about sharing a room, we went to grad school together I knew Knowledge Communities existed, but had no idea how to get involved I have no idea how the sessions were organized or categorized I attended two of the first-time attendee things, the “orientation” and the “no host dinner” on Sunday. I found neither very helpful. Region II. I apparently live and work within Region II. There is some organizational structure and conference planned by the region, there were also events. I learned about all of this not from anything at the conference, but because of my roommate. There are sessions for mid-level professionals, chief student affairs officers, and senior student affairs officers. I was registered for TPE and only planned on being at TPE on Sunday or Saturday, however I was offered a position and withdrew from it. Things future blog posts will be about: ...