Job Hunt: Infinity

In 2015 when I attended the national NASPA conference, I took down some thoughts for me to blog about later. One of those bullet was: Why are we here? What are our motivations? What do we want to gain? Are we considering our motivations when planning our days?

I haven't written here in a while, but I have been doing some writing. I'm working on a piece to be published in August in a new journal through University of North Carolina Charlotte. My paper will describe a new model to better understand the support systems student veterans have. It also gave me a wonderful opportunity to be surrounded by brilliant people during a writing retreat. I really can't say enough about the retreat. I felt like I was the dumbest one there. Half of the brilliant conversations I couldn't contribute to. I just soaked it all in. I met some amazing people doing even more amazing work. I learned about new best practices, tools, theories, data, and other work being done for student veterans. I love learning and it was like being in grad school again. I also decided on my next degree and even had a few programs suggested. The retreat was early June. Two days after I returned home, after spending one day at work, I had surgery on my left arm. Act...

When I was an undergrad I was an RA (shocker, I know). Husband started taking classes at a private institution around the same time I realized I could do this whole higher ed administration thing. So, part of his program was to take a calculus series. He took one course at a time, and in order to attend them he had to show up to his shift 2 hours early in order to leave 2 hours early. This meant he needed to get up stupid early so he showered at night and wore a ball cap to work and class. So this math class had a teacher, another shocker I know. And this teacher was an ass. He would make comments like "if you don't understand this, you had better practice saying 'do you want fries with that?'" He had a no-hats-in-class policy, and instead of treating husband like an adult, would knock on the brim and quip "no hats in class!" At some point, I don't remember what the final straw was I insisted that we needed to tell someone about the horrendous beha...

I presented during #NASPA16. My presentation did not focus on what I do professionally or my research area. I didn't propose the session, my name wasn't listed with it. But there I was, in front of a room talking about what it means to be authentic and professional while using social media. But here's the rub: I'm having a hard time personally curating my Twitter feed in the past several weeks. My job isn't very difficult, it's basic support staff stuff. But it does become hectic and chaotic with a lot of moving parts. The past few weeks we had many visitors through my office, I worked on multiple projects with people from other offices, and I had meetings of my own to attend. And I got frustrated. There were days when I was angry. There were days that when I got home I wondered why I should go back the next day. Normally, I would tweet about these things as ambiguously as possible but I don't feel "normal" online at the moment A few weeks ag...

I really like the people I work with. My entire department is friendly, respectful, collegial, and amazing. The faculty members I work with are brilliant. They balance research and teaching. The advisors I work with work hard to keep up to date with their students, providing exceptional customer service. I am really good at my job. I support 15 faculty members, 2 professional academic advisors, 2 other staff members, about 500 undergraduate students, and 60 graduate students. I build class schedules, support faculty, create and support events, process all graduate student paperwork, admissions documents, and graduation documents, and I do most of it with a smile. This week has been filled with planning multiple faculty interviews along with getting ready for orientation and planning guest speakers. Yep! It's all going on at once. And today, shit hit the fan. Actually, it's been most of the week (yes, it's only Wednesday). I also have a lot going on personally. In one ...