So, at this point, I have talked a lot about the periphery I feel like so let me talk a little bit about actual engagement with the students.  There is a lot to learn there as well and after all, if you aren't learning every day, well, then I would suggest some deep thought.

For the new advisors out there, probably the best lesson to learn is you are not a do’er anymore, you are now a facilitator. That, in and of itself, can be a hard transition. I was lucky that the first board I worked with I had literally “moved up” from that board. Several of the students sitting on the board I knew personally. I apparently, without realizing it, had taken on quite a bit to do, because that was what I was conditioned too. After a Board meeting one night one of the female members of the board I knew quite well came and sit down in my office and basically said “advise, you aren’t a member of the board anymore” and that was an easy quick wake up call that I had. It’s ok to still do, just make sure you aren’t doing what the students should be J

You know, if you have doubts about people or agents or acts, do your homework, do your homework, do your homework..can’t say that enough.  I was approached by a very good friend who, at the time, was a Dean of an extended campus for an institution I was a part of introducing me to an agent and “pitching” him in a number of ways. I bit on it thinking it would be good to engage the extended campus, taking some of the business they had already started, being a good team player, etc. etc. etc. Well, while I appreciated the recommendation boy do I wish I had done more research! We hired the agent in question for one of our larger events of the year and it became very evident that he was using us to springboard into a market, which was not the picture that he had painted at all, but it put us, me in particular into some very awkward situations. Let me say that compromise is always a part of collaboration, making sure that things are done appropriately and that they are getting done timely, etc. but there are some things I won’t compromise on nor do I think I should, in this situation student safety is always first, let me say that again, student safety is always first.

Over the course of the day, the act we had used this agent to book with, in short, needled us over a number of little things that just weren’t feasible being on a college campus. Where was our agent who was on site that day? Not much use..He didn’t want to be the “middle man” for fear of damaging his own business. It reached a point at about 2 am after the show had concluded and it was time to get them to area hotels that they had picked up “company” shall we say, but I was not putting one student in one car on the road solo for fear of falling asleep and us not having means to know nor a backup with them.  The act became extremely upset and took it out on a number of my students before ultimately taking it out on me. That’s the one time I have ever fought with an act in front of my students. So the second lesson out of this is always, always keep your cool too you have to be the rational one. Ultimately were we could have put 4 people on the road we ended up putting 8 on the road with four in two chase cars but we were able to get them off our campus and if everything is willing, I will never work with that act again..

Flexibility is a grand thing! And you will have to have a lot of it. There are a lot of things that you can plan for, account in a timeline, and more but inevitably, there are just some things that you cannot predict or foresee and you just have to roll with it. That is one of the beauties of programming I think, the in truth, unpredictability of it sometimes. I have a couple of situations that I think illustrate it. My students and I were in a post-concert clean up mode and had reached a point where there was very little left to do save make sure nothing broke dramatically and we were sitting at a picnic table talking when we noticed a young woman boarding the tour bus after the show. By build, we were not 100% sure of her age and whether it was appropriate for her to even be doing that. Unfortunately, after she disembarked some 45 minutes later approximately she had gone from being very lucid to being very inebriated.  Not knowing what took place on the bus, that created ethical dilemmas for my students and I (as I was within just a year or two of starting) as to what should we have done? How should we have handled it? What is the liability for us in that situation both if we and if we don’t step in? Very randomly we were able to have a very there are a lot of “grey” situations conversation out of it.

Build relationships, and manage them wisely. Get to know your colleagues around campus and get to know them well! We ran into a situation one time where a student was advertising a comedy series in a number of our dining services establishments around campus. On the surface it was ok, we were using a new facility, branching out a bit, a comedy “series” was programming we had not done before, life was good right? Wrong..in attempting to let the students do their jobs, I hadn’t backchecked them on this event like I should have and they had not closed the deal with the dining managers to have the series-as such, there was no location for the advertising J After a lot of back and forth on the phone with the then Dining Services director and area managers, we were able to locate one facility for the first one to be held and it matched with the advertising fortunately. However it went over so well that was were they stayed after. The caviat? It was literally at the tail end of the day (4:50 pm) when the error was discovered. Great relationships allowed for this program to go on.

You know, I could go on and on, like any number of professionals in this area I have a ton of war stories about things that went both right and wrong. Things I felt I did right, things I know I did wrong, decisions and actions that were, for all intents and purposes, “durned if you do, and durned if you don’t”. You will run into a lot of grey, fluidity, things you will kick yourself for and things you will beam about. The rewards come in small doses and small packages, like the random facebook message from a student that says thank you for standing up for us and providing this opportunity-or that alum that comes back year after year at HC to say hello.

While I find a lot of things that I would say are challenges in our field and things that we collectively as a body need to work on, these things like the alum, and the message are the reasons to be in this field. Hardly ever do you see them at the time or when you are in the proverbial “heat of the battle” but embrace them as the opportunities and the thank yous that they are.  They are what makes our field what it is, and you don’t find that opportunity much anywhere else.