The Podcast, the PechaKucha & a Pipebomb: Some Reflections on Ego

Taking a closer look at some strange things that have happened to me over the last couple of weeks, while also taking a harsh look at myself, and the field as a whole in terms of ego attachment and learning.

Hey folks!

Firstly, I want to thank the awesome folks over at Check I’m Here for including me on their list of 25 Intrapreneurs in Student Affairs!This was a very cool project to be a part of and I’m stoked that I was considered in such great company! 

Now! To the heart of the post—ego and vanity.

One quick thing!

The structure of the three P’s in the title of this piece are a reference to mewithoutYou’s song, “The Fox, the Crow, the Cookie,” which is also a reference to Aesop’s fable, “The Fox and the Crow,” and a reference to the teachings of Sufi mystic Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, who writes tirelessly about individuals being aware of the shortcomings of vanity and ego attachment.

I wanted to present this blog post in a way that represented my own frustrations with ego attachment in our field. Even with my own attachments to my perceptions of self and projections of self, I am constantly challenging myself to consider and reconsider the energy I put into the world. With this, I know that social media has complicated much of how we interact and perceive each other.

And with how we judge and bully each other.

I have been considered a troll in some circles—which, admittedly, sometimes I do push a little too much or just stroll through a conversation with no intention of being serious. Just to have some fun—but most of the time I do this out of the belief that TOO MANY PEOPLE in our field take themselves TOO seriously.

We’re in student affairs, we should have a sense of humor.

We should have fun. We should also be respectful of each other.

And when I push, I generally have the intent to simply be curious.

I am a curious person.

I am also humble in my lack of knowledge on many topics.

So I ask questions.

I also identify as a punk; so yes, I will challenge the injustices that I see.

And I will call them out—I feel like I’ve developed this reputation.

But I’ve never responded with any sort of malicious intent.

That’s not me.

Sure, I can be facetious and silly, but I’ll never take my rage out on someone in any destructive way.

Yet, many people are so afraid to be challenged—especially in the SA Facebook threads—that they take everything as a personal attack. Some folks even go so far as to block someone on social media as a means to leave a conversation. Instead of acknowledging that as a field of educators, we should be asking questions.

We should be challenging each other.

We shouldn’t agree on everything.

We should push back when we disagree.

That’s how learning happens.

But people get too stuck in their egos, or in their degrees, or titles, or doctorates, and don’t take the moment to consider that perhaps we all still have SOMETHING to learn. A degree doesn’t just make you an expert and then the learning is done.

We are a field of educators. The learning is never done.

You have to keep learning.

So let’s lose the ego. Shall we?

Made this motivational poster for my office and it comes in handy for me here!

The Podcast

It’s been a weird week or two for me.

Many folks know that, through a podcast episode, I was the target of some unnecessary and outrageous online bullying from the owner of a Higher Ed company that will remain nameless for the sake of ensuring their site gets no more hits.

In this podcast, I was indirectly labeled a “troll,” “unprofessional,” “childish,” and “a rookie.”

All labels that, sure, could describe me.

But I’d prefer not to have someone I do not know and does not know me berating me in this way.

This was a strange thing to experience publicly.

I wasn’t necessarily hurt by it. Instead, I was confused.

I was confused by the lack of understanding on behalf of the podcast creator of how this approach would ultimately undue the work they had done building their own brand.

Because the online support for me was immediate and intense.

I am thankful for the networks I have created within this field—both online and in human, physical form. Because it goes to show that if you put your true authentic self out there into the world, many folks will gravitate and support you—especially in times of need and chaos. I think this is also proven by the immense amount of support I received from folks in regard to the art I produced during my job search. So many people stepped up to support me and Katy during that time, and I am so thankful.

So, to anyone who spoke out against this egregious form of bullying, thank you.

And to anyone who reached out to me personally, thank you.

My Facebook inbox was flooded with messages of encouragement, and I am so thankful for the support I received.

The upsetting part of this podcast bullshit is that the podcast creator dragged my art into this mess—a line in the episode that made it veritably clear who he was referencing through the entire 40-minute subtweet episode.

The frustrating part of that aspect was that the same person, just over a month ago suggested a collaboration, in which I would create art for their company, they would brand it, and sell it for me.

I declined.

So when my art was unnecessarily dragged through the mud, I took more offense with that than being called any number of names.

This MLK quote piece I made for a colleague is a
great reminder to be a person of integrity and to always
stand on the right side of history.

What this experience explicitly taught me is that our egos are fragile.

We build up this idea of ourselves that is untouchable.

We hide behind degrees and titles and think that we are impenetrable.

But we aren’t. We need to be able to admit when we are wrong.

And in the instance of challenging this person, I wasn’t necessarily innocent because I admit that I did challenge him unceasingly. However, it was primarily done because the person made some phone calls to my personal phone and left some snide voicemails—which was absolutely unnecessary and excessive. (Note: They had my phone number because of the aforementioned attempt to brand my art.)

So I pushed back on that as well.

Because it wasn’t cool.

Alas, going back to having a sense of humor about things, this situation was pretty hilarious to me for one specific reason—the amount of ego fragility it took to create a podcast complaining about being challenged by a young professional is sort of funny to me because it proved who the real childish person was in this situation. Instead of engaging constructively with me, this individual felt that their ego had been attacked, and that I made this personal.

When I never did any such thing. I didn’t call them on their personal phone.

Instead, this individual made it personal by calling me out in a very public way.

This is bullying. And it’s not okay.

I’ve taken A LOT of time to reflect on this in the two weeks since this podcast was published. All I’ve come to terms with is the reality that we all must take responsibility what we put into the world.

Especially, me, as a challenger of the system as someone within the system—which, those who know me well know that I tend to take responsibility almost immediately in most situations in which I am proven wrong or when I might act out of line.

As should the creator of the podcast.

However, the prompt apology we received as a field had the collective tone of “we’re (as a company) sorry you got mad at how we feel.” Which felt like a cheap shot.

The apology was insincere and had no direction toward the person attacked on the podcast—me. And the apology was representative of a company. Not of the person who made the podcast.

The person couldn’t even muster up their own ego to admit that THEY, the human being, were wrong in this situation. This was a failure caused by ego fragility—the inability to truly admit when you did something wrong. Instead of owning up to their actions, they hid behind their company. Awesome.

Well done. 

The PechaKucha

Last week, I presented a PechaKucha talk at the ACPA Convention in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. This was my first time out of the states and it was also my first time at an ACPA Convention.

I’m not gonna write much of anything new about this PK because much of what I want to write is covered in the PK talk itself. You can even watch the video below! I have also covered much of this in the blog post about my job search!

And what I want to underline in this post are a few lines from my PK talk and what I hope to extrapolate from them.

“We need to focus on mental health, financial literacy, and wellness.”

I stand by this statement 100%

I believe that helping graduate students and new professionals with the professional aspects of a job search—resumes, interview prep, cover letters, attire—are all important, but we also need to prepare students for the reality of longer searches.

Searches that don’t end in May (or sooner) thanks to TPE.

Searches that don’t end in the summer.

Searches that don’t end in the fall.

Searches that extend into the winter or Spring semester.

Searches that can take multiple years to complete.

We NEED to prepare students for the mental health toll this takes on someone. We NEED to prepare students for the financial toll this takes on someone. And we need to educate folks on how to take care of their overall wellness during these longer searches.

It’s so important to keep our wellness at the forefront of everything we do.

“Fuck the phrase, ‘trust the process.’”

I knew this would be quite the doozy of a quote during the convention, and I was right. My point wasn’t to just gratuitously swear, but to make a point.

I’m sick of people using this phrase, “trust the process.”

Newsflash, as I said above, the search process is NOT the same for everyone!

So, let’s drop this empty rhetoric and simply tell people, “be patient.”

That’s a better way of helping someone rather than giving them any false hopes that a job is just gonna happen because it’s part of a “process.”

There is no process.

[Note: If anything, we need to revisit the entire hiring practices within student affairs/higher education. But that’s a completely different post for perhaps a different person to handle.]

“Our health is more important than a job.”

 Again, another truth.

As my job search progressed, I felt terrible about myself and about my health.

I wasn’t taking care of myself, and the length of my search was a reality I never thought I’d have to face. However, due to the search taking so long, I am now very aware of the importance that our health has on the job search.

If we can’t take care of ourselves, can we actually even hold down a job?

Doing this talk was incredibly cathartic for me.

Two years ago, this was a big goal that I set for myself—I wanted to perform a PK talk at ACPA.

I told myself I was going to do it, and once I had a story to tell, I submitted it and it was accepted! I was stoked! It was even accepted with the caveat that I hadn’t actually secured a job just yet, but that I would have one of two endings. I’m glad it was a happy ending.

The story I shared is real, and quite condensed. But it is my story.

My job search humbled the hell out of me.

My ego was HUGE going into the job search, but reality quickly took me down and I learned the hard way how to keep yourself in check. Never get too confident that you can’t see the reality of the circumstances around you.

And boy! Was my ego inflated after this PK talk.

I admit it, it felt good to be on the big stage.

It felt good to have a microphone.

It even felt good to close the event. I could say that Paul Gordon Brown and Josie Ahlquist were my opening acts, haha! I even joked with them about that. Talk about EGO—am I right?

And the social media engagements were INCREDIBLE!

Streaming my talk live on Periscope was a good idea.

But damn, it went to my head.

Greedily, I loved the attention. For the sake of my ego, I need to admit that.

And I hate that. I hate feeling like achieving something makes me also feel guilty. I have had an attention seeking personality for my entire life, and I often have to remind myself to not overcommit or try to be the center of every conversation. It’s quite the paradox to live with.

But doing this PK was also quite humbling because it was the first time I had truly felt good about myself in months. I was finally publicly talking about a subject matter in which I was personally humbled for about 10 months of my job search.

During that job search, I was physically put through the wringer. I was emotionally ground to a fine powder.

So being able to share my story and share my truth felt great. And I am glad it has already resonated with so many people. Being humbled by my job search was probably the greatest thing that could have ever happened to me because I am now keenly aware of my place in the universe.

I am just a person trying to educate other people on how to be better people.

That’s it. Plain and simple.

So let’s lose the ego.

Shall we?

a Pipebomb

Immediately following my PK talk, I dropped what, in the world of professional wrestling, is called a pipebomb—an unfiltered, unscripted moment of reality breaking through the performance.

I sat down on the stage and made a plea during my pipebomb moment (an homage to CMPunk—shout out to the SAKliq!) for our field to focus on the development of younger/newer student affairs professionals and graduate students outside of just professional means. But to also focus on supporting their mental health.

I know I harp on mental health a lot, but it’s so important.

I’d rather we talk about mental health forever than never mention it again.

This pipebomb (which is the last two minutes of the above PK talk) was a way for me to fully address the podcast situation that occurred two weeks ago, and to take a stand on the state of our field in regard to the way graduate students and new professionals are treated.

“It is imperative in our field that we support young professionals and that we
support grad students and that we do not see them as anything
lesser in this field just because we are new.”

I have had many conversations with folks who have been victims of work place and online bullying over the last couple of weeks and it breaks my heart. New professionals and seasoned professionals who have to put up with heinous passive aggressiveness and outward aggressiveness at their workplace.

This is a disgusting reality in all fields. And I hate it.

Every time I hear a story of someone using their power or ego to subvert or oppress another human being, I lose my belief in the goodness of people. And I hate that as well.

I want to believe in us as a field, as a people.

But we need to believe in us as well.

We need to believe in the value that we all bring to the field.

We need to quit it with this hierarchal vision that years of experience equals the amount of knowledge someone possesses.

Workplace bullying and professional microaggressions are rooted in power, class oppression and privilege. We need to be aware of this and challenge this shit.

People are people. And we need to love and support each other if we’re gonna survive as a field.

“So really focus on how you treat everyone in this field. I’ve seen so many stories
of workplace bullying in just the last few days online and I’m so
glad people are speaking out about it because it is so important
that if we want to see our field succeed, we need to take care of
each other and not be at odds with each other.”

Our field CANNOT succeed if we don’t get over our egos.

Your titles are meaningless outside of your office, your campus.

Your degrees are meaningless outside of academia.

Our field needs to collectively get over itself or we are doomed.

We are just people trying to help younger people eventually be better older people like us!

I don’t think I can put it any simpler.

So let’s lose the ego, shall we?

I appreciate the commentary Stacy Oliver-Sikorski lent to this situation. It added a much-needed focus on workplace bullying, and really got a lot of folks fired up about sharing their stories.

The only point that I would add to Stacy’s commentary is that MANY of us are guilty of bullying in some form or another—either online or in physical human form. And most of us either don't know it or aren't willing to admit it because our egos get in the way.

I know I am definitely guilty to some degree. And I own that.

We can call out all of the bullying we want, but ultimately, we must be willing to be self-aware of the actions and perceptions we place into the world.

I know that I am a boisterous human being.

And I KNOW that some folks have probably felt somewhat offended or annoyed with things that I’ve said.

I am very self-aware of this about myself—I’m the first to admit it.

And I recognize that I might challenge and push back against some ideas/posts online, which, to me, is a natural way of learning—we learn by life’s challenges and all that inspirational whatever. But ultimately, I know that some of my approaches might genuinely come off as trolling, and for that I am trying my best to avoid alienating anyone in my network by doing so.

Yet, I will never stop being critical of this field and I will never stop challenging the people who work in this field.

Because I love this field.

It was an honor to present with these incredible people!

I love working with students. I have dedicated the last six years of my life to working with students, to improve their social wellness, mental health, physical health, and sexual health—that’s my mission in student affairs. Yes, I tend to do things my way, in a somewhat unconventional or “radical” way, but I’ve found success in my approach.

My supervisor appreciates my approach to working with students, and my students love that I give them 100% me all the time. I am honest with them all the time that while I have a lot to give, I still have a lot to learn, and the learning is never done.

And I hope that this post encourages more people to challenge me civilly, too!

I welcome it! I want to learn, so push back!

Some Reflections

As I reflected on doing this PechaKucha, I thought to myself how cool it is that our field has incorporated a way for many of us to share our stories in creative ways—outside of the traditional presentation format. Yet, in giving many of us this stage, I want to remain cognizant of the fact that we are all just people who work with students, and just HAPPEN to do some pretty cool things.

The creation of student affairs celebrities is sort of weird to me, and I actively resent it. Because we are JUST people. Yet, thanks to the internet, we have found ways to put ourselves out there fairly consistently, and those with the heaviest hustle tend to be the ones showing up the most in feeds, which is cool and all, but a little too inflating.

I love the way many of us are given the opportunity to use our voice to share our stories and share our ideas, and I will always use mine to speak up for the underrepresented and those seeking truth and liberation. And as I’ve become more of an outspoken figure in the field, I am very aware that I need to be conscious of what I put into the world. But I will never stop being myself.

I will never stop speaking out.

I will never stop being me—unapologetically cynical, cautiously optimistic, and contagiously enthusiastic!

ALL CAPS! ALL DAY!

Very thankful for my #SAKliq family.
Many of whom have been huge supports for me over the last year!

That said, I am going to also continue being very aware of my ego, my pretentiousness, and my trolling tendencies. This is me holding myself accountable here, folks!

And I hope we can all agree to be more aware of our egos, please.

It will help for the longevity of our field.

I would love to see less arguing on the SA Facebook threads. I see plenty of civil conversations in other groups, but for some reason, folks get too riled up in their egos to admit when we’re wrong or that we have limited knowledge on something.

That shouldn’t be seen as a point of failure, it should be seen as a willingness to learn.

Be humble with what you don’t know.

I feel like I don’t know shit. So I ask questions.

And I ask for resources, BECAUSE I DON’T HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS

And neither do you, probably.

The royal you. The reader. You.

Moving on—

If we set aside our differences to discuss topics in a meaningful manner, without getting to inside our ego about being challenged, we will grow as a field.

So, let’s lose the ego. Shall we?

Alright, I think that’s it for this post.

Stay tuned, I have a pretty huge announcement at the end of the month!

Connect on Twitter or LinkedIn or check out my art here!

Be well. Stay Curious.

-Craig.

The Healthy Dose, 001: Fighting Stress in College

I recently introduced my new Wellness Column at UMass Boston

Greetings!
As a part of my new job at UMass Boston, I have begun writing a consistent wellness piece for the campus' newspaper, The Mass Media. I will be sharing these pieces on my personal blog for the rest of the public to read!

Enjoy!

---

Stress can seem pretty unavoidable as a college student.

In the 2015 National College Health Assessment (NCHA), researchers found that 30 percent of students reported stress negatively affected their academic performance, and over 85 percent felt overwhelmed by everything on their plate.

Classes can be demanding, homework can be intense, and balancing work and life at the same time often feels impossible. I remember those days vividly—staying up in the library until 4 a.m. trying to finish an essay due for my 8 a.m. English class.

Coffee, Red Bull, cookies, and sun flower seeds—anything to keep me focused, awake, and productive. It wasn’t necessarily a healthy way to live; and looking back, it wasn’t the best way to manage my stress.

Knowing the undergraduate lifestyle, I want to share three general ways to make your day a little less stressful. These are all changes I made in my life to greatly decrease my stress levels so I could perform better during the day.

First—Get some sleep, yo!
The NCHA study suggests that students prioritize seven to nine hours of sleep per night.
Seems impossible, right?

Not if you make an active effort to disengage from the world and focus on good, healthy sleep.

I know, I know, I know—Netflix is addictive, Facebook is engrossing, and homework still needs to get done amid all of that, but there is nothing more important for managing your stress than getting some sleep. You’ll function better, think better, and process your daily tasks much more coherently.
A simple step to achieve better sleep is to stop using your phones, TVs, iPads—whichever—and either read, or relax at least 30 minutes before going to bed.

I’m honestly not the best at this, I often scroll through Instagram until I fall asleep, but most nights I read a couple chapters from my book before dozing off to meet Mr. Sandman.
This little change in your nightly routine could mean the difference between good sleep and no-good, very awful sleep.

Second—Eat well, ya dingus!
By eat well, I mean, prioritize healthy and tasty foods like fruits and vegetables—foods that give you good natural energy. Make a breakfast for yourself. I start every morning with a banana, an apple, a glass of orange juice, and either a bowl of cereal or a couple of eggs as well. I would suggest staying away from energy drinks or excessive amounts of caffeine.

I speak from experience on this one, folks. Limiting your caffeine intake will help you function better, especially if you are getting the right amount of sleep.

Also, pack your lunch. Not only will you save some money, but you’ll be able to keep yourself to the food you packed. Load it up with some baby carrots, a Clif bar, and a PB & J sandwich!

Finally—Exercise, sweat it out!
I know you’re all incredibly busy, so I suggest taking at least 30 minutes out of your day to either take a walk, go for a run, or squeeze in a quick work out in the campus gym—a quick mile on the treadmill, some free weights, and maybe a little jump rope to get the heart rate going.

This will allow you to get your body moving, which will increase your endorphins, and improve your mental state—allowing your body to manage your blood pressure, improve your cholesterol, and sweat away that stress.

And if getting to the gym doesn’t work with your schedule, take time in the morning to do a quick set of push-ups, sit-ups, or even stretching before starting your day has shown to greatly improve your mobility throughout the day.

Okay, there you have it! Our first dose is complete.

Stay tuned for the next dose!

Quit Recruiting all of Your Students! — #SAChat Final Thought

I discuss the oversaturation of today's #SAGrad job market

[Note: I was asked to publish this for the StudentAffairsCollective website; however, I went over the word limit by about 2,500 words and refused to shorten my piece for the sake of the heart of the discussion. So here is the entire piece in its entirety! And I must thank Kevin, Dustin, and Sabina with the SAC for motivating me to write about this topic! It's a doozy.]

On the tail-end of #SARecruits, I was asked to write a blog post elaborating on my final thought from the #SAChat conversation on January 21st. The topic of the chat was whether or not the #SAGrad job market is oversaturated.

[Note: It completely is. But I’ll get to that in a moment.]

This was actually the first #SAChat I had actively participated in nearly a year, since I decided that I would go somewhat radio-silent on higher education conversations during my job search. I’m known as a pot-stirrer and I didn’t want any of my stirring to harm my job search in any way.

So it was nice to return to the conversation, since I FINALLY landed my first full-time professional role in higher education! I am the Health Education & Promotion Specialist at UMass Boston! Go state schools!

In returning to the conversation on the day in which I chose, I wanted to amplify my frustrations with the current state of the post-graduate job search.

I am not happy with the way hiring happens in higher education. I think it is unnecessarily complicated, political, and it does not take into account the mental health of the candidates whatsoever. Granted, there are many elements that go into every search, and every search is different; yet, I have found one of my most frustrating aspects of the search—the oversaturation of graduate students in higher education.

As many folks know, I led the #SAGrad chat on the @SAGradMOD Twitter account in its first iteration, I have since passed the reins on to Ricky Meinke, who is CRUSHING IT. Yet, in this experience, I was able to learn so much about my fellow graduate students. I learned that many of us come from all over the world, that we are dedicated to our work, and that many were very unprepared for the job search.

And honestly, if you've followed along to any of the chats this or last year, one thing is real: many graduate students are terrified of the job search.

So, I figure the easiest way to write this post would be to talk on four key points that I would like to discuss on this matter—

1. Quit recruiting your students to join the field.

Look, this field isn’t for everyone.
We need to accept that.

Some of our students would flourish in this field.
Others—not so much.

Overwhelmingly, I found that most folks in the Twitter conversation that day agreed that we shouldn’t be ushering all of our students into the field of student affairs and/or higher education.

We also shouldn’t treat our field like some sort of secret society for only the elite to know about.

Striking a balance with this duality is important—especially for me, an optimistic cynic.

I would argue that student affairs is a somewhat complex field. Working with students is not cut and dry. We deal with a lot of different personalities, cultures, beliefs—sometimes within the same student. And managing conversations with some of those students takes a lot of understanding of how humans develop.

And then you lump in the realities of truly learning about the history of higher education, social justice, access and equity in regard to who actually gets to attend college, diversity, inclusion, neoliberalism of higher education, the erosion of many state systems to private interests, what leadership development looks like, how to manage helicopter parents—the list goes on.

Essentially, there’s a lot to learn to be an efficient professional in this field.

I would like to charge my colleagues with having a truly meaningful conversation with ANY student that is even considering this field for their profession. Especially if you have any reservations over whether that student would be a good fit for the field, make sure you are able to discuss with them their intentions and desires for their future.

Working in Student Affairs does mean being a college student
for life. It means taking what you learned as a college student
and turning that experience into knowledge to share with the
next generation of college students!

Make sure to confirm that this student is NOT just looking to stay in college forever. That’s a perception that I have had to confront countless times and it’s nothing short of annoying and gives our field a bad reputation.

I know many graduate students that went straight from undergrad and from there, straight into job searching for their first professional role. Whereas, I took a year off between undergrad and grad school, because I needed to grow up and learn some things about myself. And I’m so thankful that I did because when I returned for graduate school, I was focused and ready to go.

I’ve had this conversation with many of my students—I suggest that they either take a year off and travel, or join a service project organization, before taking on more schooling. Because graduate school is NOT like undergrad whatsoever. It’s hyper-focused, and if you aren’t prepared for that, you’re gonna get swept up with the tide.

But if a student REALLY wants to pursue the field, or graduate school in general, I make sure to be real with them about the mental health toll, the financial toll, and the personal toll that grad school takes on someone. Especially in a highly politicized field like higher education—where every move and every decision can and will be scrutinized, and often celebrated!

I try to be as realistic with the student as possible, and if they're still interested, I direct them to the programs that I hold in high-esteem and give them ALL of the information they need. And I assure them that I will support them the entire way if that's what they would like from me.

Anything it takes to help them become successful! So long as it is what THEY want.

Also, this field is not all warm and fuzzy—so quit telling students that it is!

Yes, we have a lot of leadership development exercises and icebreakers that are fun and we love to keep a good optimistic front about everything we do. And yes, comparatively, we do have fun jobs.

But not everything we do is rainbows and butterflies.

We NEED to be realistic about this stuff when recruiting the next generation of professionals. Make sure student understand that our hours are generally pretty terrible, that managing conflict after conflict can take a huge mental health toll on you, and that the politics of actually trying to get some projects done will leave you alone in your office crying over your lunch.

This is a challenging field, and we need to be clear that our students aren’t entering with the mentality that our lives are like being the fun RA all day every day.

It’s just not fair to them or fair to us.
It is reckless and dangerous.

2. If a graduate program can’t pay, shut it down!

To many, this would seem like a radical decision to make.
To many, this is an impossible idea.

And sure, it might be.
But I think it could truly solve some of the oversaturation issues that our field currently faces.

One quick solution is to dismantle any and all Student Affairs-related graduate programs that cannot ensure full-funding or tuition waivers for all of its committed students.

This is a seemingly easy way to make sure that our field isn’t putting more humans in THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS OF DEBT in hopes of obtaining an entry-level job that will pay them borderline poverty wages—in some cases finding folks STILL in need of a part-time job to cover their living expenses.

That’s the reality of our field.

I know TOO many student affairs professionals in this field with thousands of dollars in debt from their undergrad and graduate studies, working a full-time role in this field, while holding a part-time job just to stay afloat.

That’s disgusting; and it’s wrong.

People with Master's degrees SHOULD NOT have to live that way.
Period.

And eliminating unpaid internships would be a great step in the right direction.
But anytime I mention that, folks get so consumed in their own selfish needs and desires and budgetary concerns that they can’t comprehend the idea of not having an eager graduate student of which to exploit their free labor.

Unpaid internships (in any field) are a form of modern slavery.

Working for experience is essentially useless because the person doing the work isn’t afforded basic human rights of being paid for their time enough to even eat a healthy meal before working. Unless they take out more loans to float them through their unpaid internships—which, again, perpetuates destructive class inequalities of forcing people into more debt for the sake of MAYBE getting a job down the road.

If you can’t pay a graduate student to do the work you need done, then don’t offer the position.

Plain and simple. Graduate students are people, too.
They deserve to be paid.

And I know that there are budget issues, and space issues, and time issues, but burdening a graduate students into more debt for the sake of “experience” is not an ethical way to get work done.

Burdening a graduate student with more debt and no payment for gaining experience is a human rights issue and a mental health issue. If a student cannot afford to pay for food or rent, there is a good chance the student will not function to their peak potential due to concerns of whether they’ll be able to eat or live each day.

This step of making sure we aren’t oversaturating the field ensures that we are getting professionals that are sharp, ready, and prepared because the programs that CAN provide funding for all of their graduate students will become more selective and the field as a whole will benefit from that.

I am a firm believer in quality over quantity.

Just because a program graduates 40 students each year doesn’t mean those students are prepared, or that the program properly equipped those students for the reality of the field.

In an ideal world, programs should admit no more than 20 students each year, and secure funding for 10-12 students.

This all might sound harsh, but honestly, a lot of graduate programs are very lukewarm—they’re surface level and stale.

I am shocked when I encounter a conversation with recent graduate students who haven’t consistently covered topics like privilege, access and equity, oppression of education, neoliberalism in education, etc. It makes me wonder what people are even learning!

I have spoken with MANY graduate students who resented their decision on a certain program because it improperly advertised its offerings to potential graduate student, and ultimately lacked critical analysis on numerous social issues. Instead, I found that the focus was solely on student development, which again, is a great thing, but it is NOT the ONLY thing.

There is SO MUCH MORE to what we do and what we deal with than JUST working with students. We need to explicitly expose our students to the reality of how institutional political factors contribute to the experience of being a professional in higher education. Otherwise, we are doing them a HUGE disservice.

Granted, I attended UMass Amherst for my graduate studies—a program known for its exclusivity and HARSH focus on the landscape of higher education—so I have been trained to look at literally everything with a critical lens and to not settle for anything less than challenging the status quo and the imbalances of power that plague our field.

Hence, why I write the way I write about these issues.

At UMass, I had the privilege of having a tuition waiver, being unionized, having a salary and health benefits during graduate school—which is EXACTLY why I am speaking out about the recklessness of programs not being able to provide such rights for all of their students. All graduate students deserve to live comfortably and not in fear of where their next meal might come.

I know that it will be nearly impossible to eradicate programs that cannot pay for all students, that doesn’t mean I can’t be mad that they still exist and put many human beings in too much debt for too little gain down the road. And folks can say that we don’t do what we do for the money, but you cannot avoid that you have bills to pay and you want to enjoy your life outside of work while you are on this earth.

3. The jobs just aren’t there.

I just finished a 14-month job search. It sucked.

[NOTE: Here’s a link to my length discussion of what the experience was like.]

During my job search, I realized that there just aren’t many jobs out there! Sure, my search was limited to the Greater Boston area and parts of New England. But we have more institutions in this area per capita than ANYWHERE else in the world. So if I was struggling just to find job postings, I figured others were worse for wear.

This realization did not just come from my experience, but from discussing with many colleagues who were also searching for a long time, or are STILL searching some two years after graduating from their graduate program.

And we can't go a day on the Student Affairs Facebook group without someone sharing their story of having been out of work for months or years! It's incredibly unfortunate.

I have even spoken with current graduate students who are currently interviewing for summer internships. The current ACUHO-I internship site lists around 440 available internships for the upcoming summer. And the ACUHO-I folks sent a tweet earlier last week that claimed that nearly 1,000 students applied for those 440 internships!

That’s RIDICULOUS!

We have created this problem.

Sure, one can look at having so many people in the field as a good thing. Creating the next generation of professionals and all that. But if those people don't have access to the experiences they need and are not properly compensated so that they can live and function, then there is no need to celebrate this influx of graduate students because of them will just leave the field in a few years. Like many who have failed to secure a job have done.

From my 2014 NACA internship at Towson!

Summer internships are gold in this field, and well over HALF of the students seeking those specific internships might not get one. This is definitely a cause for some disenfranchisement when I talk with current grad students who are worried about how that oversaturation will translate into their job search.

One of the big factors impacting this oversaturation is that many folks—primarily in RD roles—make horizontal movements when taking on their next job. This impacts graduate students because they are fresh out of graduate school with only graduate experience to support their potential to be hired. Not a few years of experience like some making horizontal moves have.

Now, I not knocking those who make horizontal movements for the sake of taking a new job—I’m knocking the hierarchy of student affairs and higher education for not being very conducive to advancement.

Granted, I’m just a young whippersnapper—so, what do I know about the dangerous impacts of hierarchical structures?

Well, I’ve witnessed and discussed this issue with a number of my mid-level colleagues and the majority sentiment is that our field will quickly lose good people because of the lack of opportunities for upward mobility.

We aren’t just going to lose graduate students, or maintain or worsen our attrition rate of approximately three years as an educational profession, we are going to lose good professionals who love working with students everyday but feel there is no place for them to land because the opportunities do not exist.

It’s a sad state of affairs when good people in graduate school are ALREADY disenfranchised by a field in which the average tenure as a professional is 3-5 years.

So why spend so much time training, learning, doing mostly unpaid internships, and putting yourself in more debt if you’re just gonna leave the field in a few years?

It makes no sense to me.

4. Realistic expectations of the job search do not exist anymore.

Okay, I’ll try to wrap this one up a little faster than the previous sections because I’ve already covered a lot of what I would say in this section.

Every search is different.
There’s no denying that.

But for some reason there’s this idealistic vision that everyone should have a job lined up before graduating from graduate school and if you don’t, you life is going to come crumbling down.

That expectation is very unrealistic with today’s oversaturated market.

I’m sure there was a time when folks could roll up to TPE or OPE or any other job interview factory and expect a job in a few short weeks or a month or so. But today, that just isn’t the case.

Last year’s TPE had around 750 jobs available, with over 1100 people interviewing.
When these statistics were announced at the conference, people cheered.

People. Cheered.

I was ashamed. I was shocked.

Sure, that’s a lot of available jobs. But people were essentially cheering that SO MANY people, so many great individuals weren’t going to have jobs. And I personally only know a handful of folks that even landed jobs through TPE.

Again, we have created this problem.

In talking with my colleagues, the reality is that many graduate students aren’t getting jobs until the summer months, or the even until the fall begins. Current professionals and SAHE faculty need to prepare graduate students for this reality!

Only one person from my 16-person cohort had a job lined up by graduation.

And we were ALL badasses.

The reality is that we need to do a better job being honest with graduate students about saving money, about possibly finding part-time jobs for after graduation, about taking care of their mental health before their health insurance (if they even have health insurance) runs out.

My job search took a huge mental toll on me, and I constantly felt like a failure for not having a job when I saw my cohort colleagues eventually getting jobs, and I was just sitting at home painting all day. Alone. With nothing but my depression and anxiety to bring me down.

Luckily, I have an incredibly supportive partner, Katy Hamm, who was there for me during my entire search. I am eternally grateful for that. Katy went through a ridiculously long job search as well, and we will be working on another post together on how to approach and prepare for longer searches.

This knowledge of the reality of longer searches is imperative to improving the expectations of those graduate student hitting the job market.

So, please. We need to quit talking about the job search like any of us have any answers. Because the job search process is completely random, political, and good people STILL don’t have jobs.

You can tell folks, “Trust the process!" or “Be authentic!” or “Make sure your resume stands out!” or “You’re interviewing them as much as they’re interviewing you!” all you want. But you’re not offering any real advice with that. That is all empty rhetoric unless you give tangible and practical advice on application.

Mental health, more than anything, should be the top priority for any job searching graduate student. And then saving money. And then focus on all that other stuff that it takes to require obtaining the right job, like resumes, cover letters, interviewing experience, etc. Because if you aren’t taking care of yourself and your well-being, you will not be able to perform well as a candidate whatsoever.

But it seems like either no one wants to have this conversation, or they’re too afraid to face that our field is in serious trouble if we don’t do something about it. Once we start being honest and realistic about the issues that plague the current job market and the plight of the student affairs graduate student, that’s when our field will become stronger than ever.

Bo-lieve that.

#SAKliq love.

* * *

Ultimately, there are plenty of things that need to be fixed about this field. And sure, I may be a little harsh on the field, but I love doing this work.

I love working with students to show them that if a punk kid like me—someone who was told constantly that he would never amount to anything—can do something with my life, then I want to prove that anyone with the passion to do so can!

Hope you enjoyed reading this chaos and I would love to continue the dialogue on Facebook or Twitter! So reach out, tell me I’m wrong, and let’s chat some more!

Until next time, be well and stay curious!

-Craig.