“I’ve been making a list of the things they don’t teach you at school” – Neil Gaiman

One of my favorite things about the end of the year is the preponderance of lists about everything possible during the previous year.  I spent a good hour yesterday afternoon poring over the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly analyzing their lists of top movies, books, and television shows from 2010 and listening to tracks from NPR’s list of the top 25 albums of the year.  These things tend to be fairly arbitrary, but I’m a sucker for them.

As many members of the #sachat community know, I started a new student affairs position in July, after being at my previous institution (and alma mater) for the previous 5 years.  It has been a whirlwind of a semester, and in the spirit of the end of the year I’ve written my own Top 5 list of things that I’ve learned.

1.  Understanding students is not a universal ability. At my previous institution, my rapport with students became second nature.  It was really easy to relate with students and start a conversation, even about challenging situations or topics. In my new position, though, it has been a challenge for me to connect with students.  I’m still learning about our students and what makes them unique.  I’ve been second guessing my skills in this area, but it’s getting better as I learn more.

2.  Sometimes starting over helps you to remember what it’s like to be a student again. I’m not exaggerating when I say this: I think I enjoyed orientation as much as our new first-year students.  It was invigorating for me to learn many of the traditions at my new campus.  I spent the first few weeks of school with the same nervous feeling in my stomach that I had when I started college as a student.  It may sound silly, but not knowing acronyms or where buildings are really helped me put some of my work with residence hall students in perspective.

3.  Trying something new can be invigorating. I’m not saying I was phoning it in at my old institution, but with time and experience comes the ability to get really comfortable with your tasks and projects.  Starting something new, with challenging responsibilities that I am very excited about, has resulted in me feeling energized about my work in a way that makes me excited to go to work each day.  I’ve enjoyed applying my critical perspective to my new department (in appropriate ways) and trying lots of new things.  It has been refreshing.

4.  You’re only as strong as your network of friends and colleagues. One of the best parts of starting this new gig has been the outpouring of support and help from friends and colleagues.  I’ve leaned on my contacts regularly for answers and feedback.  Knowing that help is only a phone call or tweet away is an awesome safety net, especially when you are doing your best to make a good first impression at the new job.

5.  It’s not all about work. Starting over in a new city has helped me to think more about maintaining a sense of balance between work and everything else.  With this move I’ve also had the complication of living apart from my partner, which has been difficult to navigate. It would be easy for me to say yes to everything and work 70-hours a week, but I have tried to be disciplined and spend time reconnecting with family and friends in the area, exploring the city, and staying connected to everyone in the town I moved from.

I don’t think that these are lessons that can only be learned by picking up and moving to a new institution.  Reach out to students who are outside of your bubble.  Take a step back and reconnect with the student experience while forging new relationships with colleagues.  Ask to try new things at work (or better yet, start doing the things you are excited about on your ‘someday, maybe’ to-do list).  And perhaps most importantly, keep things in perspective and surround yourself with the people and activities that bring balance to your life.  Happy holidays!

Learn Local!

I’m sending this update today from the Annual Conference of the Pennsylvania College Personnel Association (PCPA). For this year’s conference, I was the chair of the programming committee. We’ve got a pretty incredible line-up of presentations this year, if I do say so myself.

The conference theme is “Navigating Change,” and as I think about this post, I think about the ways that professional development has changed in the short time I have been in the student affairs field. While I have really enjoyed the decentralized, always “on” nature of the Student Affairs Collaborative Blog and the #sachat community, I have also found a lot of value in building connections with my local division of ACPA.

When I entered the field I wasn’t aware of the major professional organizations, and I certainly wasn’t self-assured or self-motivated enough to reach out to these groups and get involved in their work. PCPA, however, was a small and inviting organization. It made it easy for me to network with other professionals from across the commonwealth and to get my feet wet while presenting at conferences. I never imagined I would sit on an executive board or serve as a mentor to other young professionals. I have had all of these opportunities, thanks to PCPA and the great folks who have reached out to me in this organization.

In this era of limited professional development funding, take a look at what your local and regional organizations are offering and see if they could be a part of your PD plan. If #sachat and the Student Affairs Collaborate blog are awesome, free PD opportunities, think of your local organizations as awesome, low-cost opportunities to get out of your campus bubble and make connections in your area.

Everybody’s Working for the Weekend (But Not Everyone Spends Those Weekends Taking Classes)

If you are considering part-time (or full-time from a distance) doctoral work, you’re going to want some flexibility at work.  I’m fortunate to work in a department that has been very supportive as I have started my doctoral work.  One of the common themes in my cohort is that we have been able to successfully navigate the balancing act with work and school, and this is really essential because of the unique arrangement of a primarily distance-education program.

If you are at a place in your career where you are essentially your own boss, negotiating for flexibility in the workplace may be fairly simple to achieve.  If you are an entry-level professional or a mid-level manager, it may take a little bit of work.  Here are suggestions that I believe have helped me to find this balance.

• Include your supervisor in the graduate school application process.  During my 1x1s with my direct supervisor, we periodically talked about my academic goals and the things that I was working on.  My supervisor knew where I was applying and basic information about timelines.  As the process moved along, I think my supervisor felt a sense of being invested in what was happening, and became another source of insight and support.
• Include your graduate work as a formal part of your staff review and development plan, if such a thing exists at your institution.  Each year I include my academic work as some of my goals for the upcoming year.  Time spent on coursework is included in my professional development hours. By having this formally in place, it allows for a certain level of transparence between myself and the institution. It demonstrates to the department that I am making progress.
• Get creative with resources at your institution.  My best personal attempt at this is related to getting time out of the office for class.  In Student Affairs at Penn State, we are allowed out of the office for approximately 4 hours per week if we are taking a class, and this is time that we do not have to make-up.  Since I don’t attend a weekly class on our campus, I have negotiated with my supervisor to allow me to “bank” this time each week, and apply it to the Thursday and Friday of my monthly weekend in Virginia for class.  It is a huge relief to not have to take vacation time each month for class.  Find other similar policies at your institution and see if you can make them work for you.
• When you are at work, be at work! I’m really committed to maintaining an exemplary level of performance at my job.  I would not be OK with my colleagues or supervisors feeling that I am slouching off at work since I am so focused on my academics (we’ve all had those people on our teams, and it’s not fun). Work comes first from 9 to 5 (and sometimes before and after that).  I’m not going to say that I never read or work on papers at work, but those tasks never take priority over my job responsibilities.

It’s not perfect.  I’m still working through what it means to balance work and school, and I am sure it will change a lot when I get started on my dissertation.  Next time: time management!

Classic Rock on the Radio

Do you always listen to the same type of station on the radio? Jess and I were driving through Erie the other day when we realized that regardless of where we are, we tend to gravitate towards classic rock on the radio. In State College it’s 93.7 The Bus. In Erie, it’s Z 102.3FM. Classic rock’s domination of our radio presets is confusing because neither Jess nor I really listen to classic rock if we are not in the car listening to FM radio. My iTunes is dominated by 90s and 2000s indie rock. The Bus does not play Mineral or The Get Up Kids. There isn’t a single track by the Beatles on my iTunes, but I hear them daily in the car.

I think that the appeal of classic rock channels can be connected to a few key factors. First off, it’s reliable. All of the classic rock stations play the same music, basically. There’s something to be said for the comfort that goes along with that. Second, there’s always a chance that Rush will be right around the corner. Third, I’ve been in training to enjoy classic rock stations since I was a kid. It’s what my dad has always listened to, and some of my best memories as a kid are driving around with him and having him quiz me on who was on the radio . . . . including the classic puns about The Who whenever Pinball Wizard would come on the air.

“Who’s this?”
“The Who.”
“Who?”
“The Who.”
*groans*

So I keep going back to classic rock on the radio. It’s not really cool, and it’s certainly not new and exciting . . . . but it’s good, and that’s good enough.

The Daily Grind isn’t just the coffee shop on “Friends” . . .

After a 5-day siesta from the daily grind, I was back in the office today. I like my job. A lot. But I struggle with Thursdays anyway, and with today’s Thursday also having a Monday sensibility about it I really dragged, even though I was basically productive and got a good bit of work done. It’s nice to whittle away at your inbox and talk to the colleagues you haven’t seen in a while. Everyone wanted to know how my dad is doing, which was nice.

On that front, things are going well. When I called Hamot this morning, the nurse told me that they would be moving him from the ICU to the regular part of the hospital sometime today, which is good. He was apparently sitting in a chair this morning, which is a good milestone (even if it seems like a small thing to you or me). On my most recent call, he was doing his dialysis, so they asked me to call back later. I’m glad he’s doing well, all things considered. After a fairly stressful weekend with lots of traveling, how did I unwind last night after returning to State College? With a cigar and some whiskey, two key ingredients for heart health and physical-fitness.

In between busywork and meeting with students this afternoon, I tried to follow the very exciting iPhone 4.0 software press conference. Lots of cool new functions, none of which will be supported by my 1st generation iPhone. I’m eager to see what iPhone 4 has in store this summer . . . not that I’m eager to trade in my 2+ years old iPhone, mind you. I would like to drive it until the wheels fall off (although I am certain I have gotten the cost per use down to fractions of a cent, even if it was purchased before AT&T really started subsidizing the cost).

For tonight: Top Chef Masters and Survivor on Tivo. Oh yes, there will be reality TV and a whole bunch of doing nothing.

Blogging from the Hospital

Today my dad is having open-heart surgery at Hamot Hospital, in Erie.  He’s having a triple bypass surgery.  So far things are going OK.  We should be getting another update fairly soon about his progress, but last we heard he had received his anesthesia and the surgery was underway.  The hospital has wifi, but it is pretty jenky.  If every local mom and pop coffee shop can offer reliable wifi, why can’t the hospital?  On the other hand, I guess it is better for their resources to go towards something other than my twitter addiction.

Seeing my dad in this condition is tough.  One the one hand, I feel bad for him and want him to do well.  On the other hand, I guess this is what happens after a lifetime of smoking and eating poorly . . . but I still want him to do well.  Theoretically this is going to be the end of his cigarette addiction (after a recent failed effort using Chantix).  I’ll believe it when I see it.

Things I like about visiting Erie:

• Men and women here still have the same haircuts that were popular when I was in middle school.
• Smith’s Hot Dogs.  These are the best processed meat products ever, and I know a thing or two about processed meat products.
• Local weather forecasts include three different regional variations (lakeshore, inland, mountains), with a difference of about 2 degrees from one area to another on any given day.

Doctoral Student From a Distance

In my previous posts, I have written a great deal about the admissions processes that I navigated on my way to pursuing a doctoral degree.  I’m going to shift gears and begin a new series about the specifics of the program in which I chose to enroll and my experience as a full-time doctoral student and full-time working professional.  It is a unique program, and it is my hope that my experience will be of interest to the readers of www.higheredcareercoach.com.  Please do not mistake this as a sales pitch for my particular institution or type of program . . . but I hope that it illustrates how I have attempted to balance doctoral studies with my professional career and family life.

I’m currently a first-year doctoral student in the Higher Education Administration Ed.D. program at the George Washington University.  While GWU offers a traditional doctoral program experience at their Foggy Bottom campus in the District of Columbia, I attend classes at the Virginia Campus near Dulles Airport. I have chosen the cohort program model that GWU offers. In this program, a number of students are admitted each fall.  This cohort of students takes all of their courses together for the first two and a half years of the program, seven credits each semester during the fall, spring and summer.

Courses for cohort students at the Virginia Campus are taught by the same faculty members who teach at Foggy Bottom, and course content and program requirements are the same, although they are adjusted a bit to accommodate for the unique needs of cohort students.  All members of the cohort program are working in higher education, and most of us do not live in the D.C. area.
Here are the major factors that resulted in my enrollment in the GW cohort program, instead of a more traditional program at another institution.

• The ability to accrue meaningful professional experience while making progress towards my doctorate.  As an entry-level professional in student affairs, I was concerned about being “overqualified” with a doctorate and limited professional experience.
• The idea of being in a cohort was really appealing to me.  I knocked out my masters degree part-time while working full-time, so I never had the experience of being in a cohort and making strong connections with classmates.  I felt like I was missing out on that during my masters program.
• GWU just seemed like a good fit for me.  It’s not the most highly ranked program in the world, but everyone treated me well throughout the admissions process.  They were really transparent about the strengths and areas for growth with their program.  I really felt like they wanted me there, and like I would have support to do good work.
• They offered me some financial support (not full tuition or anything like that), which was nice.

Some of my concerns about the program included:

• Balancing 7-credits each semester with my 50-60 hours per week at work.
• Travel.  One weekend a month while working in a position that requires me to be on-call is quite a commitment, while also adding to the costs of the program.
• Quality.  GWU says the quality of the educational experience is just as good for cohort students as it is for traditional students.  Would this be true?

In the end, I thought the pluses outweighed the potential negatives.  To this point, I have been thrilled to be a George Washington Colonial, and I am find the delicate balancing act of work and school manageable.  Next time, I’ll write about how I’ve negotiated things at work and home to make all of this possible.

Decisions Decisions! (or Part Four of “How I Found Myself to be a Doctoral Student”)

After what seemed like years of waiting (but was actually more like 6-8 weeks) I started to hear back from the institutions to which I had applied.  Something that was surprising was the lack of real information that admissions decisions included.  I imagined the “fat envelope” that I remember from my undergraduate acceptances, but in reality what I was getting in the mail was usually a single page letter.  Sometimes there were a few additional pages of information about how to access the online “accept or decline” form, but rarely more information than that was included.  Where was the financial aid package? Where was the information about assistantships and student groups?

I know I’ve mentioned it a few times, but this is where cultivating relationships with staff assistants, office managers, and faculty at your prospective can really pay off.  I found these folks incredibly helpful.  Each institution is different (so pay particular attention to the materials provided by your prospective schools), but as a rule by including an institution on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) you will be considered for the general federal aid (grants and loans) at that institution.  Some programs guarantee an assistantship and full-funding (tuition and stipend) for all students who are admitted, while others provide information about assistantships that are available and students can apply for each one they are interested in, like they would for any other job.  Some departments have financial aid that is distributed through a competitive process that includes a separate application and essay, so be on the lookout for the details and deadlines.

When possible, I would suggest getting the full financial package and assistantship details in writing before accepting an offer of admission.  As budgets get tighter this may be a discretionary line-item which departments can change from year to year, so if you are being told you’ll be guaranteed funding for 2 years, ask the department to put that in a letter for peace of mind.  Once an offer of admission is made, it will be rare (and maybe illegal?) for an institution to rescind that offer because you want some specific details.

Understand that you will want to hear back from all of the institutions you applied to, but that by waiting you may be giving up opportunities at the institutions that let you hear back from the earliest.  Most programs will work with you and be patient, but I did have some institutions that put deadlines on assistantships and financial support.  You’ve been accepted because the program wants you there, but particularly in popular programs at selective institutions there will be people on a waitlist.  Fortunately I had a complete picture from all of my institutions before I had to make a decision, but I could see where there would have been complications if timeline were a bit more different.

There is something to be said for declining offers with grace: do it.  Especially with higher education being such a small field and everyone knowing everyone else, it is important not to burn bridges.  You may be talking to a future colleague or employer, so make sure to be honest but polite about your enrollment decision. Most institutions will not ask what you are doing instead of enrolling, and you really don’t have to elaborate.  Chalk it up to a better fit elsewhere, thanks them for the opportunity, and move on.

You did it!  You’ve navigated the system, gotten admitted, and have your finances (essentially) pinned down.  Next time I will begin a new series on the type of program I chose: a primarily distance-education Ed.D. cohort, designed for individuals working full-time in higher education.

Desk Mess Update!

After returning to State College from our nation’s capitol, I made my first priority at work cleaning up my desk.  I think I did a pretty good job!

The Waiting is the Hardest Part (or Part Three of “How I Found Myself to be a Doctoral Student”)

Tom Petty was right: the waiting is the hardest part.  Once all of my doctoral stuff was submitted (approximately January 1, 2009), I got a pretty severe case of the “itching to find out what happens next.”  Here are some dos and don’ts based on my experience managing the purgatory that was January, February, and March of my doctoral admissions process.

DO . . . make sure to take some time to ensure that everything in your personal and professional life that you fell behind on during application season gets taken care of.  Wouldn’t it be a kick in the shins to have a program check your references and not have them be glowing because you’ve been distracted lately?  How about a date night (or two) with that special someone who has hung in there while you practiced for the GRE, dropped hundreds of dollars on application fees, and continues to wait patiently while you decide which state you may be moving to?

DO NOT . . . start getting obsessed with all of the details related to relocating to your dream schools.  I spent more time on Craigslist looking for aparements than I really should have.  Figuring out the time it will take to get from that dream home to campus via public transportation is not the best use of your time, and may set you up for disappointment if things do not work out the way you hope they will.

DO . . . be aware of financial aid deadlines at the institutions you have applied to.  I found that I was able to apply for departmental funding and other institutional aid once my application was in, and that those deadlines might be earlier than I would find out about an admissions decision.

DO NOT . . . hesitate to contact the programs where you have applied to ask about the status of your application, particularly if there is not an online method of checking on this.  I mentioned earlier that office managers and staff assistants can be great resources, and I found them to be excellent sources of information.  A quick email or phone call is OK to ask about where the process is going. But . . .

DO NOT . . . call them everyday.

In all honesty, this in-between period was kind of fun.  The hardest work was over, the possibilities were bright, and there is a sense of accomplishment that goes along with getting the paperwork taken care of (particularly if you are paperwork-phobic like me).  For my next post, I’m going to discuss admissions decisions, getting real about money, and trying not to burn any bridges.