One week in.
The first night of sleeping in this residence hall, I was beginning to settle in to what I was asking my family to do, telling myself over and over that it wasn't going to be that bad. And about 9:00 pm, the dinosaurs came.
The noise was prehistoric. They were stomping through one side of the building, eating college students, brick, wood, and nails, and headed straight for us. Screaming, banging, gunfire, explosions. I couldn't believe that a noise this loud wasn't attracting national guard attention...but then again, maybe it was.
According to my fellow Residence Life professionals, that noise was actually not dinosaurs but instead the "Call of Duty" phenomenon, a video game that must be played with the same PA system that Motley Crue uses during an outdoor festival and within similar volume levels. So alas...we weren't going to die but I was reminded that this journey is not going to be a walk in the park...I'm in their world now. And thankfully, I don't know that I would want it to be. I have already been surprised by the secondary ecosystem that happens after dark on the college campus and I have a feeling that I will be a changed college administrator. Or I better be!
And since moving, trying to close on our house, sending our beloved hounds away for a year with two dear friends in another city, the start of school for two professors and bringing our two-year old along wasn't enough, we went ahead and decided to end the pacifier time during this transition as well. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I was outvoted on this one but I think that it is going better than I thought it would. My little one thinks he has died and gone to heaven being surrounded by college students all of the time and endless tricycle sidewalks but bed time has become a challenge.
But thats fine. We're blessed. Things are good. I keep reaching new levels of fatigue but that's to be expected. Again, things are good. If they just wouldn't practice Zoomba in the middle of the night right above our heads...
Dizz
Monday, September 3, 2012
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
The Adventure Begins
So I'm back...with a brand new invention.
After much soul searching, a year of diving into the murky depths of academic administration and meeting with many, many professors and administrators and maintenance personnel; after buying a house that I am convinced was the wrong one for me and my family; after spending the year wallowing in budget reductions, work place drama, higher education literature which strongly suggests the end of higher education as we know it, and coming close to losing what was left of my post-dissertation brain, my wife and I put our collective feet down.
It began this way:
PT. I
I was asked by the chair of a committee that reported directly to the president to join him and a few others on a team that looked at the ins and outs of our university. We explored the literature on the rise and failures of higher education, many folks calling for a technological takeover, the pricing bubble, and falling value of the degree coinciding with the rising costs of the degrees, etc. And then we met with literally hundreds of folks in and off campus...professors, adjuncts, administrators, board members, etc. As you can imagine, the members of this team were not popular on campus - more than once I was asked, "Does your own mother even like you?" But in this, one fact resurfaced over and over and over again. And that is this: the sticker price for four years of college for my young child, at a measly 5% annual tuition increase, would be upwards of $350,000 for four years.
As such, I am all but positive that there will be a disruptive intersection within the next 2-10 years.
Pt.II
My wife and I were driving home from church a few months ago and out of the blue she said, "we are no longer allowed to pray for poor people, hungry people, or orphans until we are giving money to the poor, feeding the hungry, and in the process of adopting a child."
Really profound spiritual moment for me.
Pt. III
After working through that profound statement, I began to be highly reflective, looking for ways my actions were not congruent with my actions. One of the most glaring was in regards to my student loans. Owing other people money. I counseled students on the horrors of debt and I looked up to those rare souls who do not owe other folks a nickel. I ranted and railed to anyone who would listen about my own educational loans and the financial burden that they put my a young family (our minimum payment is right at $1000 a month) but I simply wasn't doing anything about them. We were paying the minimums each month while also eyeing new vehicles, a better houses, etc. Oh yeah, and my loans were on a 30 year note. Seriously.
So my wife and I sent our little one to my folks house and headed to a local coffee shop. While there, we focused on two truths: We owe a high five-figure number in student loans between the two of us. Besides our home, that was the only money we owed someone else. Knowing that higher education - where we both work - will continue to be highly unsettled in the very near future, it is incredibly irresponsible to carry so much debt baggage. Additionally, we both come from houses of high debt and we felt that this was a golden opportunity to put a stick in the ground and say "from this point forward, we're going to live differently."
So we made a plan. I signed a part-time faculty contract to help with extra money. We sold our house and we're moving into a student housing complex on campus. We've committed to having these loans gone in a year. We're calling it our Opportunity.
Part IV
Another sense has take over. Our original conversations were about getting to good financial footing. Not owing anyone anything. But the further along we have swam out from shore, the more something equally important has emerged.
I got into my work with college students for just that: to work with college students. And as many student affairs workers lament, the longer you work in student affairs, they less and less time you spend with students and the more and more time you spend romancing spreadsheets, assessment, running from meeting to meeting, and the like. This has become my my mission for carrying through with this plan. I am looking forward to interacting with students once again. Laughing at their crazy ideas. Lifting weights next to them in their fancy new gym. Being annoyed at 2:00 am when their parties really get going...extending their learning outside of the classroom as they watch me be a father and a husband.
I'm a pretty introverted guy. I'm really looking forward to calling my own bluff. To move in with hundreds of neighbors that I don't know and that I've never met and get to know them on a personal level. I know that this upcoming year will be long, difficult, exhausting, and a significant challenge. But I can't think of a better person in the world to have on my side in this adventure than my wife and I can't think of a better place to be launching out on this adventure.
So here we go...
After much soul searching, a year of diving into the murky depths of academic administration and meeting with many, many professors and administrators and maintenance personnel; after buying a house that I am convinced was the wrong one for me and my family; after spending the year wallowing in budget reductions, work place drama, higher education literature which strongly suggests the end of higher education as we know it, and coming close to losing what was left of my post-dissertation brain, my wife and I put our collective feet down.
It began this way:
PT. I
I was asked by the chair of a committee that reported directly to the president to join him and a few others on a team that looked at the ins and outs of our university. We explored the literature on the rise and failures of higher education, many folks calling for a technological takeover, the pricing bubble, and falling value of the degree coinciding with the rising costs of the degrees, etc. And then we met with literally hundreds of folks in and off campus...professors, adjuncts, administrators, board members, etc. As you can imagine, the members of this team were not popular on campus - more than once I was asked, "Does your own mother even like you?" But in this, one fact resurfaced over and over and over again. And that is this: the sticker price for four years of college for my young child, at a measly 5% annual tuition increase, would be upwards of $350,000 for four years.
As such, I am all but positive that there will be a disruptive intersection within the next 2-10 years.
Pt.II
My wife and I were driving home from church a few months ago and out of the blue she said, "we are no longer allowed to pray for poor people, hungry people, or orphans until we are giving money to the poor, feeding the hungry, and in the process of adopting a child."
Really profound spiritual moment for me.
Pt. III
After working through that profound statement, I began to be highly reflective, looking for ways my actions were not congruent with my actions. One of the most glaring was in regards to my student loans. Owing other people money. I counseled students on the horrors of debt and I looked up to those rare souls who do not owe other folks a nickel. I ranted and railed to anyone who would listen about my own educational loans and the financial burden that they put my a young family (our minimum payment is right at $1000 a month) but I simply wasn't doing anything about them. We were paying the minimums each month while also eyeing new vehicles, a better houses, etc. Oh yeah, and my loans were on a 30 year note. Seriously.
So my wife and I sent our little one to my folks house and headed to a local coffee shop. While there, we focused on two truths: We owe a high five-figure number in student loans between the two of us. Besides our home, that was the only money we owed someone else. Knowing that higher education - where we both work - will continue to be highly unsettled in the very near future, it is incredibly irresponsible to carry so much debt baggage. Additionally, we both come from houses of high debt and we felt that this was a golden opportunity to put a stick in the ground and say "from this point forward, we're going to live differently."
So we made a plan. I signed a part-time faculty contract to help with extra money. We sold our house and we're moving into a student housing complex on campus. We've committed to having these loans gone in a year. We're calling it our Opportunity.
Part IV
Another sense has take over. Our original conversations were about getting to good financial footing. Not owing anyone anything. But the further along we have swam out from shore, the more something equally important has emerged.
I got into my work with college students for just that: to work with college students. And as many student affairs workers lament, the longer you work in student affairs, they less and less time you spend with students and the more and more time you spend romancing spreadsheets, assessment, running from meeting to meeting, and the like. This has become my my mission for carrying through with this plan. I am looking forward to interacting with students once again. Laughing at their crazy ideas. Lifting weights next to them in their fancy new gym. Being annoyed at 2:00 am when their parties really get going...extending their learning outside of the classroom as they watch me be a father and a husband.
I'm a pretty introverted guy. I'm really looking forward to calling my own bluff. To move in with hundreds of neighbors that I don't know and that I've never met and get to know them on a personal level. I know that this upcoming year will be long, difficult, exhausting, and a significant challenge. But I can't think of a better person in the world to have on my side in this adventure than my wife and I can't think of a better place to be launching out on this adventure.
So here we go...
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Everybody
The end of the semester is very near. Folks get a bit nihilistic in their thoughts and actions...fatigue will do that to you.
My good friend texted me this today and I laughed out loud. Not an "lol" or an "LOL" but a good old fashioned, hearty laugh.
Good stuff.
My good friend texted me this today and I laughed out loud. Not an "lol" or an "LOL" but a good old fashioned, hearty laugh.
Good stuff.
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
With all due respect...you're dumber than me.
Here is my plea to all administrators. I am speaking to those within the academy specifically but this message also extends to those who work in real jobs in industry and commerce.
In short, trust your people and their expertise. Don't let your default setting be dismissive or condescending. In thought industries like higher education, you hire folks for not only their ability to process and render data, but also to interpret it, look at it in new ways, operationalize it, and distill it down in easily digestible chunks (usually called high points or executive summaries). When you ask someone with expertise in an area to run reports and give you a recommendation based on the confluence of the data and their expertise, don't let your first response be, "....ummmmm...naaa. I don't think so."
If you don't trust someone's expertise in the area they were hired for, do the right thing by both them and the institution and move them somewhere where they will be more effective. But don't be dismissive. Or even more importantly, if you have an answer to a question that you want found, point your team in that direction as their task. Make the answer you want achieved the goal of the exercise and not the mystery.
I'm a qualitative researcher by trade so I tend to have a significant bias...but often, the story is in the details. When the details are pressed and filtered and regressed down until they are flat (that was my biased "gotcha" toward some types of quantitive analysis), there is often no longer a story to be told.
And I'll take a narrative over a number any day.
Be respectful and remember that trust works both ways.
Dizz.
In short, trust your people and their expertise. Don't let your default setting be dismissive or condescending. In thought industries like higher education, you hire folks for not only their ability to process and render data, but also to interpret it, look at it in new ways, operationalize it, and distill it down in easily digestible chunks (usually called high points or executive summaries). When you ask someone with expertise in an area to run reports and give you a recommendation based on the confluence of the data and their expertise, don't let your first response be, "....ummmmm...naaa. I don't think so."
If you don't trust someone's expertise in the area they were hired for, do the right thing by both them and the institution and move them somewhere where they will be more effective. But don't be dismissive. Or even more importantly, if you have an answer to a question that you want found, point your team in that direction as their task. Make the answer you want achieved the goal of the exercise and not the mystery.
I'm a qualitative researcher by trade so I tend to have a significant bias...but often, the story is in the details. When the details are pressed and filtered and regressed down until they are flat (that was my biased "gotcha" toward some types of quantitive analysis), there is often no longer a story to be told.
And I'll take a narrative over a number any day.
Be respectful and remember that trust works both ways.
Dizz.
Monday, May 7, 2012
40 Hours in Heaven
I'm always fascinated at our inability to revere or trust the past. The newest, latest trends/research/way of doing things cycle in and out and if history serves us correctly, we have a habit of forgetting why we are doing the things that we are doing.
In the case of higher education, I think that now is an appropriate time to be looking at why we are doing what it is we are doing and how that is translating to our actions. For instance, Super College might be interested in educating students towards critical thinking, a broad understanding of the liberal arts, and service to others. I think an interesting and important question that must be asked then is whether or not a 128 hour degree plan is the best way to get there. And so forth...
Anyway, this is tangental to the purpose of today's post. My good friend James sent me this article today and it was both fascinating, true, and ironic. It was fascinating in that I am currently wrestling through one of the more difficult seasons of burnout I have ever had. Not totally uncommon for this time of year for anyone who works in education, but this year was especially long and full of challenges. It makes sense that the research would suggest that because of the pace and schedule I've kept this year, i'm professionally and personally useless right now. My wife would probably agree.
Circling back to my first paragraph, it is amusing that we seem to work insane hours and work even nuttier life styles, abandoning the traditional work week. One step removed, it would suggest that 40 hours and five days a week were either arbitrary or for lazy folks. Yet the research seems to be pretty strong in opposition to such hubris.
So in honor of this article, I'm heading to bed.
Dizz.
In the case of higher education, I think that now is an appropriate time to be looking at why we are doing what it is we are doing and how that is translating to our actions. For instance, Super College might be interested in educating students towards critical thinking, a broad understanding of the liberal arts, and service to others. I think an interesting and important question that must be asked then is whether or not a 128 hour degree plan is the best way to get there. And so forth...
Anyway, this is tangental to the purpose of today's post. My good friend James sent me this article today and it was both fascinating, true, and ironic. It was fascinating in that I am currently wrestling through one of the more difficult seasons of burnout I have ever had. Not totally uncommon for this time of year for anyone who works in education, but this year was especially long and full of challenges. It makes sense that the research would suggest that because of the pace and schedule I've kept this year, i'm professionally and personally useless right now. My wife would probably agree.
Circling back to my first paragraph, it is amusing that we seem to work insane hours and work even nuttier life styles, abandoning the traditional work week. One step removed, it would suggest that 40 hours and five days a week were either arbitrary or for lazy folks. Yet the research seems to be pretty strong in opposition to such hubris.
So in honor of this article, I'm heading to bed.
Dizz.
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Providence is shenanigans.
It's probably been the weather...the overly hot pre-summer days. Folks here in Texas are still scarred from last summer's screening of "Hell: The Movie" and I think most are a bit weary of another summer of 90 or so days of triple digit heat.
As graduation approaches both the high school and college crowd here in my little college town, the feel good verse of the bible is really being taken for a ride.
Jeremiah 29:11 reads:
For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
and so on is passing the buck at best, and at worst, a total lack of willingness to be accountable for our own decisions and actions. See, I've found that I'm quite the wimp when it comes to making big decisions. Should we buy a house? Should I take that job? Should I_____? Those decisions are so much easier to stomach when I can pawn them off on some cosmic deity carrying out a big game of chess.
As graduation approaches both the high school and college crowd here in my little college town, the feel good verse of the bible is really being taken for a ride.
Jeremiah 29:11 reads:
For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
It is on seemingly every graduation card, used in every end-of-program speech, and popping up on email signatures of both young and old. And quite frankly, I find it's use annoying.
A quick story.
I was a bit of a romantic back in high school - I loved writing good letters, poems, songs, etc. This was before email and the twitters and so letters were more than just letters...done well, they were works of art. I took great pride in the crafting good letters, perfect mix tapes, and writing overly dramatic plays (that I never seemed to finish). Fast forward to now, where I have been married for many years to the love of my life. I still write now, just not nearly as often. Would it be fair for a stranger off the street to pick up one of these letters, read it, and begin telling the world how much I love them? I would think not...the letter was written to a specific person in a specific time frame and with a specific purpose.
As such, I'm annoyed at how often folks adopt the Lord's statement to Jeremiah. Quite frankly, it has nothing to do with them. In fact, think how different the starving child in Haiti must read that verse. Or how the aging abuse victim reads that verse. Or the young cancer victim. It's almost insulting to adopt that verse as a universal statement of God's plans to make - insert yourself here - wealthy and give you hope. Quite often, it doesn't work that way.
And that brings me down the path of some thoughts I've been having for some time. I'm somewhat of a recovering Calvinist. In two sentences (or less), I always identified with Derek Webb's notion that God is not some "cosmic janitor," racing around cleaning up people's messes while simultaneously trying to get some of his will done. I've never really taken to the message that we have much of a say in what God chooses to do...because he's God. Pretty simple. If he chooses to predestine a few and torture the rest, so be it. Not a whole lot I can do about it. Now obviously, this view does not fare well, especially here in the United States where any successes we have or do not have are theoretically tied to our desire, fortitude, work ethic, and "want-to."
I have found in my own faith tradition, we like the idea of God having plans for us as long as they match our own desires, hopes, and dreams. When all is well, God is planning for us. When things go askew, we have somehow managed to mess it up.
I've been talking to students who are on the eve of graduation and one of my favorite questions to ask is, "So now what?" To a person, nearly every student at my faith based university says that they are really praying for God's wisdom and direction on what they should do next. Take a job or go go grad school. Work a summer job and chill or start something new next Monday. Interestingly, I live very much the same way.
Several years ago, I was the finalist for a wonderful job in a new city far away. Dream job. My wife and I prayed that God would just make things clear. Make them easy. So we would know beyond a shadow of a doubt. After much prayer, we just knew that we would get either a mega-offer or that I would get turned down and God would be "letting us know" what he wanted for our lives. We got neither. I got a medium offer. Good, but not great. Good enough in theory...not good enough to pack up and head across the country for. So I turned it down and we were left with some lingering questions as to what God wanted us to do. Had we done the right thing? Was I being a snob? Was God calling us somewhere and I had just thwarted his will? Blah, blah, blah.
Several years, and many important decisions later, I think that I am losing belief in the idea of providence. This idea of God having a stake in all major decisions in our lives. I believe that lightening strikes...but I'm beginning to doubt whether God throws the bolts.
In fact, I've come to believe that this idea of praying for God's providence in certain situations, i.e.:
"We found a great deal on our big new house...it was a total God thing!"
"We're just praying on whether or not we should move to a new college."
"I just don't think God wants me to go to grad school right now..."
and so on is passing the buck at best, and at worst, a total lack of willingness to be accountable for our own decisions and actions. See, I've found that I'm quite the wimp when it comes to making big decisions. Should we buy a house? Should I take that job? Should I_____? Those decisions are so much easier to stomach when I can pawn them off on some cosmic deity carrying out a big game of chess.
I think at the end of the day, God cares much less about the college I'm working for but instead cares that I'm serving him. At work. In the drive-thru. At the dry cleaners. And he would probably like me to quit co-opting his message to Jeremiah for my own sense of feel-goodness and placation. Instead, I can make hard decisions, frightening decisions, and sometimes family-tree changing decisions...being prayerful the whole way. And then taking personal ownership of the rewards/consequences.
God never told me he would prosper me and not harm me.
So I forge on, praying for his guidance and blessing...hoping that I receive them. And using prayer as a reminder to continue to be Christ-minded when making major decisions. And remembering that God may just not care what I'm doing or where I'm doing it...but how I'm doing whatever it is I'm doing.
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