Tag Archives: student affairs

I’m working on a project and would like some assistance.  Here’s your mission should you choose to accept it:

1. Create a video describing the most difficult situation you’ve dealt with professionally (not something personal, but either a professional or volunteer situation).  If you’re having trouble coming up with something, any situation will do.  If you’re too shy for video, I will accept text, but I’d prefer video.
2. Post that video on youtube, and title and tag it “influenceedu”.
3. Make a second video with how you resolved the situation and follow the procedure above.
4. Send me the links.

Thanks in advance for your help.  If you’d like to do this as a conversation, I’d be more than happy to, as I have software to record google hangouts or skype!

I was reviewing my transcripts this weekend and I noticed how poorly I had done during the year I was most involved in college.  My GPA up until that year sat at a solid 3.615.  Given that I was taking an intensive pre-pharmacy curriculum, and had 2 president’s list and 1 dean’s list semester, I feel pretty good about this number.

During the year I did student activities, I had 30 credit hours and pulled 2.57 GPA.

The following year, as student body president, a less demanding role on my campus, I was back to a 3.66.

So, what happened?  I was super involved.  I always tell people that my job during that year became student activities.  I was Mr. Involved Student.  Hell, I apparently liked it so much that I decided not to be good at my grades.

Of course, there could be 75 other factors in there, like the ending of a long term relationship, and a lot of other personal change.  But I do believe the numbers are startling.  A full point down in GPA and a return to that previous position the next year.

I can’t be alone here, right?

Draw on Chickering (FREE) 

Pocket Student Affairs Theory (.99)

Student Affairs Theory Quiz (.99)

You should be able to get all of those apps by searching on your phone.  The charge is to compensate for future updates to the last two apps.   Enjoy!

My Android Market page

With an inherently serious app already available, I wanted to make something available that was a little less serious.  I think everyone who works in student affairs has been frustrated with student development or students in general or maybe just working in student affairs, and you’ve wondered to yourself, what’s the big deal with this Chickering dude anyway?

Maybe it would make you feel better to Draw on Chickering.

Introducing the Draw on Chickering app!  Draw on Chickering in 3 colors as well as big and large dots.  Perfect for getting through those frustrating days in grad school and work!  Stop posting passive aggressive posts on Twitter and start drawing on Chickering’s face (not endorsed by Chickering himself, even though that would be awesome).

I posted on Twitter recently that I wanted to learn how to program phone apps.  Here’s my first foray into doing so.  This is an Android app specifically for student affairs professionals.

Are you a seasoned student affairs professional who needs a little theory refresher?  Or maybe a grad student that’s trying to test yourself on your theory knowledge?  This app is simple enough for you to pop open once in awhile as a refresher, but substantive enough to make you think about what it is we do as a profession.

I’m offering this for now for $.99.  Send in a Paypal payment using the link below and I’ll send you the APK file and installation instructions for Android so you can install the app yourself.

Stay tuned.  More stuff to come!

My good friend Laura Pasquini shared this link on twitter a while back, a youtube video with people sharing their biggest regret (ok, it wasn’t this video, but I couldn’t find the original.  this will do).

My initial response was that I try to not live with regrets, I just have things that I do using the information I have at the time.  It’s foolish, I think, to look back and think about regrets because you’re viewing it through a lens that was different than the one you had that you used to decide to do whatever you did that you regret.  It’s unfair.

So on the surface, I hate this question because it’s unfair and it’s filled with people being unfair to themselves.  I’ve seen too many people in my life get so burdened down with regrets of things they did, things that they wish they did and things they shouldn’t have done.  They stop functioning and stop living forward.  To quote Don Draper, do what you have to do in life, move forward and you’ll be surprised by how much these things didn’t matter.

However, I was surprised to find myself at the orientation presentation I give for students, starting to realize something I regret.  I was giving three presentations, off and on, during orientation sessions, one which focused on parents and rallied them to get their students involved with campus, one on campus events and our campus activities board, and one on the offices in student affairs and how we provide life-changing experiences and resources for students.  Two of these sessions, the ones that weren’t about campus events, were presented with other offices, including the career center.  The funny thing is that I found myself mentioning, quite specifically, the career center in the other session.  But why?  I wonder if I didn’t see myself quite a bit in their 18 year old faces, making me feel that I needed to tell 18 year old me a story.

Let’s backtrack.

I started off college as a business major.  During the first week of school, I changed to pre-pharmacy, presumably because I wanted to make that bread (academic advisors will find that familiar).  I did well in pre-pharm, and was admitted to pharmacy school after my sophomore year.  While working in the pharmacy, I realized that I hated it, so I drove back down to my college the summer before pharmacy school, dropped out and re-enrolled in undergrad as a chemistry/biology major.  After one semester, I dropped the bio major to a minor and would eventually graduate as a chemistry major.  Somewhere in there I got wrapped up in student activities and we know how that ended (if you don’t, check my about page).

So, not knowing what to do with myself at this point, I left to live in California for the summer, while I waited to hear back from the bizarre collection of graduate school applications I’d submitted (phd in chemistry, mba, divinity school (yes, i said that)).  I was admitted to all and decided that the phd in chem was the best financial path since I’d be making a whopping $24k per year and have my tuition covered.  I would end up leaving the program after a semester with terrible grades, complete disinterest in my classes and the stink of failure.  I would have left in September, truth be told, because I hated it, but I couldn’t give up on my teaching obligations.

Fueled by that experience, I somehow acquired a teaching position teaching 7th grade science that I would leave at the end of the school year.  After that, I got a CNA certification and got a job at a small surgery center.  During the course of that year, I decided I wanted to do student affairs, but couldn’t apply.  So I left this job when my lease ran out and was able to acquire a job working in the mortgage industry with Wells Fargo.  During my time there, I’d be admitted to grad school and the rest, as they say, is history.

So, why did I tell you all this?  Other than self-mutilation?

The truth is, I was a complete idiot.  I hope that the seasoned career folks and student affairs pros can see the foolishness in my path there.  I entered college with no direction, left college with no direction and spent the next four years doing the career exploration that should have been done as a college student, if not as a high school student.  In truth, I didn’t realize how lost I was.  My parents weren’t able to help, even though I know they really wanted to, and I wasn’t wise enough to seek professional help at that age.

My biggest regret is that I didn’t know how lost I was.  I wish that I’d had the intelligence and foresight to go ask a seasoned career pro to help me through how lost I was, maybe to give me a career inventory or something (oddly enough, one of these landed me in student affairs).  I wish that I hadn’t spent three years wandering around lost.  It cost me a relationship, friendships, three years of earning potential, a lot of emotional distress, and a lot of time doing something I love.

So, I think that’s why I felt compelled to reach out to these freshman.  I don’t want them to end up like me, someone who just blindly stumbled into his vocation.  All of the resources I used to get here are available to anyone on the internet or in a career services office.  Don’t be a moron like me and not take advantage of it if you find yourself lost.

Truth be told, I’ve seen a career professional 4 times since I started my masters degree in 2007, and I plan on going back the next time I feel a little bit lost.  They’re good at it, and I trust that they have my best interest at heart.

That’s the thing about regrets.  As long as they inform your future, and move you on towards something positive, they’re worth your time.  Just remember, as the avetts say, when you run make sure you run to something not away from.  I think I’m running the right way….for now.