Stardate 5/3/2010…greetings from a tech school where LAN parties draw more attendance than comedians and software/hardware engineers fear talking to dental hygiene students. When engineers wear Carhartts and math classes abound! Trapped somewhere in the midst of all the enormously intelligent health and engineering majors, I found myself, a meager communication student, wondering how I would ever fit in. After finding my niche in student government I began to realize that working in student affairs as a career wouldn’t be half bad, after all, I’d had a lot of experience as an undergrad and I figured I pretty much knew everything I needed to know. But I was wrong.

What I Didn’t Expect
Being fresh out of college and getting hired as a full time professional with a bachelor’s degree from the same institution, I was in for a big surprise! I thought it would be a piece of cake since I already had a lot of experience with the inner workings of the Campus Life office and already had a good rapport with many of the key players. What I failed to realize, was that suddenly I was no longer a student and the expectations and rules were much different as a staff member. It was hard for me to achieve the image of an authority figure being so close to my student’s age. I also struggled with seeing that authority in myself.

Suddenly, I found myself having to watch what I said because, although I could get away with certain comments as a student, I was now a staff member and the expectations were different. I struggled with professional communication because of my age and being used to communicating as a student. Luckily, I was afforded the opportunity to volunteer for the NACA Regional Conference Planning Committee which provided me a network of other student affairs professionals both new and those more experienced. I learned a lot from getting to work with colleagues from other schools and hearing how they handle problems or situations on their campus.

What I REALLY Didn’t Expect
As a student I didn’t really realize the pressures my advisor was under when it came to putting on the events. If I didn’t do my job, nobody would come after me, rather they would come after my advisor and ask why the event didn’t have high attendance or why there wasn’t enough advertising or how come nobody told campus safety this was happening. Of course now that I’m an advisor myself, I understand why my advisor was always stressed out about things going smoothly. Of course there’s also the politics that I didn’t have to really experience as a student. If my team decided they wanted to do a particular event that pushed the envelope a bit, our advisor would get a little nervous. At the time we thought it was just her being “an old fuddy duddy” but now, as an advisor I understand that sometimes it’s more than just an event, it’s a statement, and if it doesn’t fit within the institutional goals and objectives it’s easy to scrutinize.  

I also often struggle with letting my students learn from their mistakes rather than rushing in to try and solve the problem for them. As a student I was right in the middle of the event and if one of my team members didn’t complete a task, I would do it for them just so the event would still be successful. As an advisor trying to practice student development theory it’s hard to resist the urge to rush in and rescue a project or event because as a student I was used to the opposite.

I'm still learning "the other side" but loving every minute of it!