SEAHO Report - Winter 2022 - 25

FEATURE ARTICLES
make a living if I stink at my chosen profession?! " I can't be the only one having these thoughts or
questioning my decision to be a helper within student affairs. In fact, I know I'm not because I hear
about countless social media pages of current and former #SAPros screaming into the void of just
how messed up this job really is. (In full transparency, I refrain from social media in general because I
know the internet can be a very depressing place.)
In short, I am not alone. YOU are not alone. This job, this profession, is honestly rough. There are too
many expectations and demands that are not even remotely possible to meet. There is an illness in
the field, and something is just not right. Why haven't we found a solution? Why do we get caught
in this endless cycle of burnout, self-sabotage, and, in some cases, self-medication? Why do we
subject ourselves to this monotony of toxicity? This, dear reader, is the reason we have such high
turnover in our field from my non-clinical, assessment-less perspective.
And yet... And yet, there still is something unique about this certain time in people's lives when
they begin to question, learn, and develop through their experience at a college or university and
blossom into the person that they intend to be for the rest of their lives. There truly is something
magical about watching a student " get it " for the first time, ranging from learning how to do laundry
away from home to discovering their own values and worldview. It is addictive to see a student thrive
after surviving through a horrible setback in life and think, " I may not be able to change the world,
but today I helped change their small corner of the world. " It is that one little spark of magic within
this big business. It is that darn starfish story that seems to appear in every motivational speech at
departmental retreats and trainings.
And, that is what keeps me coming back: the people. The people in this profession matter
immensely! It's hundreds of thousands of people making small positive changes for hundreds of
thousands of other people. In my time, I have met incredibly wonderful human beings at all levels:
students, staff, faculty, parents, etc. It is their humanness that engenders this inherent sense of
worthiness that makes it necessary for me to make sure that their personhood is valued! My " why "
(that Simon Sinek has so famously coined) is that people in this world matter, and it is my vocation
to make sure that as many people as I happen to encounter feel like they matter. Am I perfect at
this particular calling? Hardly! And yet, I keep getting up after each knock-down or mistake time and
time again to try it the next day.
Because, in my opinion, there needs to be both types of people within student affairs: the dreamer
and the pragmatist. In this profession, we have to coexist and partner together, sometimes even
within the same person! In order for colleges and universities to persist in the direction away from
their origins of a homogeneous existence for the wealthy, white, straight, heteronormative, Christian
man, we need to have variety! We can't constantly crush the dreamers for having outrageous dreams
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SEAHO Report - Winter 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of SEAHO Report - Winter 2022