I hereby forbid myself to do any job hunting tomorrow.

My life is consumed with the paltry task of sending out Cover Letters and Resumes with the vague idea that I want some school to like me so much they want to talk to me, make love to me, and have me for an on-campus interview. I did, however, discover a site today that's called SimplyHired and gets jobs from multiple student affairs (and other?) job site, in a searchable database. Hopefully it can let me decrease the time I spend looking at a bazillion different student affairs job sites and instead I can write great letters and get them off. Two more letters done this morning. Please, I beg of you, shoot me now? Elle

Six down, ten to go. Job hunt rant ahead.

Three more applications out the door! I wish I had more of a handle on how many more people are still looking for reslife jobs and how many more there will be, because it feels like there's not a whole lot of new jobs going up at the moment (I'm searching at the Chronicle of Higher Ed and Higher Ed Jobs). Of course, people are also snagging jobs at their colleges which will soon be their alma maters, so for me it looks like taking a summer job is getting to be a better and better solution. Still haven't applied to outward bound baltimore, I suppose I'll get on that and be done in the next hour on that. Maybe there is still a chance I can be a assistant instructor for the summer and maybe even into the fall. I could always apply for Semester At Sea, but I don't know that I want to be on a boat for that long. Even I draw the line someplace. Few greater are the buzz-kills to graduation than actually having to move and find a job, decide where to settle or how the heck I'm going to make my way. In addition, the job I'm applying to at my own school has gotten no response to me. I've seen the heads of reslife and student affairs more than a few times but have no idea where I stand, if I stand at all as a candidate. I would really love to know whether or not I'm even in the running, considering in the past my performance has been less than perfect as an employee of residence life (I've learned! I swear!). But I tell a lot of my friends and acquaintances that I applied, and they are excited about me potentially being around. It doesn't hurt that my love Megan, my own RA from my freshman year, has decided not to compete with me for the position, a huge sigh of relief, though word on the street is the position is not free of competitors. But I know that I want what's best for the residents. Recently MICA ResLife redid it's goals, and I have to say that if this is how Scott's running the joint now, then I want in! We will offer the best housing program in the country for students specializing in the education of visual artists. (okay, the grammar could use some work)) We will become experts on our students. We will appreciate the gifts that they bring to our community and educate ourselves on perennial challenge areas within this distinctive population. We will share what we have learned with our colleagues through both publications and presentations. We will keep an open mind, promote inclusiveness, and challenge expressions of intolerance. We will educate the whole student. We will provide an atmosphere, augmented by structured activities, that encourages introspective exploration and personal growth. We will promote personal and community accountability, model effective communication, and stress the importance of responsible citizenship. We will be teachers, students, advocates, and allies. We will dedicate ourselves to issues of accessibility and excel in serving students of all abilities. (One I'd personally like to see in student affairs and academic affairs here at MICA). What did you/do you like about your on-campus college experience?

Applications just may be the death of me

I can't even imagine applying for jobs before the internet, as young as that makes me sound. Even so, of my 12+ schools I'm applying for full-time positions for this fall, only a few are accepting online applications without any supplements. Seriously? Well, anyway, here's my cover letter-- April 3, 2008 To the House Director search committee: I am seeking a position that will allow me to continue to work with a diverse population of college students and employment as a house director at Hampshire College would be an important step on my journey as a student affairs professional. My skills and experiences coincide with the description of responsibilities of a house director. Attached are my application materials, including my resume and a list of professional references. Highly-visible, friendly and compassionate student affairs professionals help provide students with an education that is well-rounded and not just academic in nature. It is my personal commitment to the development and support of the whole student that would make me a strong asset to your residence life team and coincides with the goals of Hampshire College. Of particular interest will be my varied experiences in leadership, residence life, and programming in the context of a small private institution. My passion for working with college students stems from my time at the Maryland Institute College of Art as an involved undergraduate student and residential community advisor. Four years at MICA have given me a dynamic education as both a fibers artist and creative problem-solver, but I knew when I was putting off hitting the studio for planning programs or spending time with my residents, that I had a greater desire and energy to serve full-time in the field of student affairs than pursue a career as a fine artist. In addition to my art and residence life background, I also have experiential education, team-building, crisis management and conflict resolution skills from my work in the outdoors and camp environments. Given the diverse skill-sets outlined in my resume, I am well-prepared to embrace a broad range of roles that would likely be required of me at a small liberal arts school like Hampshire College. Many thanks to the committee in advance considering my application. I would be delighted to further discuss my skills and qualifications, and I look forward to the possibility of serving your institution and students this upcoming year. Respectfully yours, Elle I really hope I get some call-backs for these applications. I'm going to spend the rest of the evening working on them, I spent the entire day working on the cover letter, but now that cover letter has to be re-written for every single school with the appropriate things changed, most hall director letters will be very similar but the more student-activities type positions will need a decent overhaul. I feel like I'm applying for so many positions, but I have no idea what the competition is like. All I know is that I have three summer job offers, and I probably can't take any of them (all outdoor jobs) because for student affairs jobs you start in the summer and help put training together for the fall RA's. I have simply got to be just the person SOMEONE is looking for, and if fate is kind, hopefully I'll get in touch with them or didn't throw out the application already. PS: I made Boinkable links again today with my Kevin Smith-Chasing Amy entry. I am feeling the love from Richard Blakeley at the cute/dirty/smart sex-positive blog these days, and y'all know the quickest way to a girls' heart is to link to a post of hers on a highly trafficked site.

Movies.

I think this vacation has been the most movie-filled in a long time. I saw Juno, I Am Legend (on IMAX), Perseoplis, and then Sweeney Todd:The Demon Barber of Fleet Street . And tomorrow, I'm going to go see a sneak preview of the romantic comedy 27 dresses. It's going to be lovely. Honestly, I am totally scared that it's almost the end of college (undergrad at least), and I want nothing more than to just skip to 6 months from now and just know that everything is going to be okay. I know it will be . I'm more focused and have more direction than most of the people I know and go to school with, and yet somehow I'm worried. Somehow, right? I just have to get into the studio and work and work on some of my applications. I was going to wait to apply for grad school, but I think I'm going to do an application for Shippensburg in PA. They pay you $18,000 a year to go to school part-time and be a Hall Director part-time. It seems right. But I still want to get outside and go on adventures and become a better climber and teacher before I'm too old to do so, till life gets in the way. So many decisions.

Hello, My name is L, and I'm an adult.

Last Friday I had the opportunity to go to the Maryland College Personnel Association conference and graduate school fair and I had the pleasure of running into another Suitland Visual Arts grad who is getting his Masters' in Student Affairs. Joe is two years ahead of me and is a hall director at Shippensburg in Pennsylvania. What's pretty exciting right now is there is going to be a show of 20 years of art program graduates at Suitland next year, and I am really excited to see what everyone's up to. That being said, I'm not upset at all about going into Student Affairs, because I know know know that that's what I am meant to do. I can improve students' experiences at school and impact their development as college students and adults, and I can do it in an artists' community like MICA, RISD, SVA, Cooper, Savannah, Memphis, CCA, SAIC, or Parsons. It was fantastic to be with this highly-specialized group of individuals who work in student affairs, people at all stages in their careers, from graduate students to entry-level to shining stars in their professions, the future president of the ACPA. I made business cards, hobnobbed, won a pen set, ate cake, enjoyed myself thoroughly despite the strange business-casual appearances. And everyone was SO friendly, these are extroverts, amazing men and women who have dealt with crisis and care to their residents and students.

Kind of mind-boggling.

One of the big reasons I really want to work in Student Affairs is that as young adults, students evolve practically before your eyes. Students can go from naked mole rat freshman, who don't know how to get groceries or do their own laundry, to being able to be self-sufficient, world-traveling artists/individuals/adults, who pay taxes and have apartments and animals that they can take care of. I am not exempt from being in this age bracket, however. My mind boggles at where I was 6 months ago, a year ago, freshman year. So much has happened this year, and I can honestly say that I've grown from my experiences.

Practice in self-reflection

Being an RA, there was a decent amount of emphasis on self-reflection. Even the High School @ Moorpark College, where I spent my senior year of high school, with it's emphasis on career exploration through ethnographic study and doing all those lovely Myers-Briggs and career assessment inventories, placed a vast emphasis on self-reflection, understanding functions of an individual within society or a given workplace culture. I ha an interview today with Meadow Mountain Ranch for a Unit Leader - Outdoor Specialist position. The interest in this job, and jobs like this, are manyfold. After all, I was nature girl till art school. I was going into fisheries and wildlife management, probably at University of Maryland, College Park. I love ropes courses, rock climbing, being outside, getting dirty, animals and plants, ecology. I am a much different person when I get enough sunshine. Anyway, I talked in my interview today with Buster from Meadow Mountain about lots of things, but some things I heard were that they're a drama-free camp, that they teach you in training to help girls learn to not interact with relational agression, try to break up cliques. Apparently the other Unit Leaders are really open and excited about new co's, and that while I may experience feeling like the new girl come comin' to camp, I feel like I'm not gonna feel that way come the end. Talking about how I'd had to resign from my job earlier, I also was able to talk about not going back to Kamaji, and how it wasn't a good fit, and maybe MICA's not the best fit for me, maybe MICA's ResLife program isn't the best, and when I graduate as much as I might really really love to come back to my alma mater, there may not be an appropriate position, much less an open one, for me. Right, so, Buster complimented me on my self-reflection skills, which a lot of people don't have, she said, and I immediately thought of one of the Student Affairs blogs I read in which they talked about the emphasis on that at their grad program. Anyway, I got offered a position in Estes, Colorado, up near Boulder an Estes National Park, and should have another decent line of work experience to add to my Student Affairs resume, plus a reference or two. Pay's paltry, but the experience should be pretty priceless. You don't always get the jobs you want in life. You apply, pitch yourself as fulfilling each and every qualification for the position, hobnob, use the professional watermarked resume paper. Sometimes, the place offering the job and the person looking to get hired just don't match up right, and that doesn't mean you lose , or that you are a worthless human being. Just means you didn't get the job.

Sordid student affair

A recent comment from my friend Susan (who blogs about oxytocin at hugthemonkey.com) sort of is spurring the following entry (original post here). Susan, you asked me why student affairs and not art? First, I'm going to say that I have a friend who graduated from MICA, who got a Fulbright to study textiles in India, came back to MICA to finish the masters in arts for teaching program and served as a graduate assistant to ResLife, and then decided she didn't want to finish MAT, and she became the assistant residential coordinator. Now she's leaving MICA to persue textile design, but she really contributed as a staff member because she went to MICA as an undergrad, and she understood the needs of the students and student-staff so much better than non-MICA-grad staff. The last two years have added a lot of items to her resume, given her tons of responsibility and leadership experience, put her in a position to effect students at her alma mater, and been an important bridge between art students and the professional staff. She's pretty much my hero. She didn't do the whole reslife thing as an RA when she went to MICA, she had the student experience, and now she's had the professional experience. That being said, I want to work more than two years she's spent in student affairs. I don't know that I have enough that I want to say with my art right now, or enough that I want to share, to be an artist full-time. I'm also seeing the possibility that I'll live long enough to have two full careers. After all, student affairs does have a really high burnout rate. In terms of money and lifestyle, student affairs, I feel like, is something I could do for a while, since I love dorms and college students and campus life, but not neccessarily forever. I don't know that student affairs is all that lucrative, though I know somewhere is always hiring due to aforementioned high burnout. Right now, this is my plan: Summer 2007, get lifeguard, cpr, first aid certification May 2008, graduate with BFA in Fibers, concentration in experimental fashion Apply for Marburg and Fullbrghts (grants for artists to study abroad) Summer 2008, spend summer outside being outdoorsy, camping, canoe trips, etc. at a summer camp. Though this position doesn't relate directly to student affairs, but it's leadership experience in a role with a lot of responsibility, and is potentially a source of some amazing references. Fall 2008, look for jobs in student affairs like hall director, assistant hall director, especially at institutions that work with student affairs graduate students. While I do have a certain fear of failure as a designer or fine artist, I know that I'm good at that, I know that I'd be a pretty good art teacher, and would love to teach high school students in visual/performing arts programs like the one I was at for the first two years of high school. Those teachers changed the course of my life from fisheries/wildlife management to getting a BFA in art school. I became obsessed with the idea of art school, and my parents have been instrumental in making this dream come true for me. It has been a wild, crazy experience, and I wouldn't trade it for the world. It's also been brought to my attention that I'm stubborn. I come from a long line of stubborn individuals. And while a certain part of me wants to work in student affairs to prove to myself that I can do it, to get over what happened this year, that's absolutely not the driving force. The driving force is that I want to help students the way that RA's and Area Coordinators and Residential Coordinators I know helped me. And I have a passion for it that surpasses that I have for creating art. There were times this year where it was so easy for me to choose to prioritize programming and residents over my own studio art work. Funnily enough, this occured to me in January-February, when J broke up with me and I was looking for all the other things that meant something to me in my life. And I found my residents as bringing me that joy and becoming that community I was looking for. In my mind, I have little interest in working at a not-art school, or in a residence hall for science and physical education students. There are a few dozen high-tier academy art schools in the United States. Working at an art school means I'm still in that community of artists. A lot of time, professional staff get to take a class or two for free or a reduced cost per semester (which does double duty of being not just The Man on campus, you're also someone's classmate). There are art graduate programs at these schools, which is something I'd have to think about to teach art at the college level. Were my parents glad to hear that I was thinking about going into student affairs? Of course. It's got benefits, which are the holy grail for those who've graduated with a bachelors in fine arts. But for so many reasons it makes sense, and feels like the right place for me. I've got interests in multicultural and ethnic affairs, issues of diversity and inclusion on campus, I feel passionately about disability services, I love programming and student activities, and of course have a high interest in the communities of artists living together that on-campus housing represents. And I see little reason that I can't develop a studio practice of my own and continue making art in the context of working in student affairs for 8 to 10 years. I'm also willing to forgive myself for screwing up the RCA thing this year. It's not the end of my involvement here, and I learned a lot, even if it was the hard way.

Just can't get ahead

I applied for studio manager for the on-campus residential studio spaces available for weekly check-out to students, and from what I understand the assistant residential coordinator also encouraged one of my former residents to apply, at least. I'm frustrated because I really feel like I need a continued relationship with ResLife, above and beyond Desk Assistant Trainer and Desk Assistant. The reason that I need that continued relationship is that I'm planning on doing Student Affairs for a career. I know my former resident, she just got hired to the DA staff, and I was actually very surprised she didn't make RA this year. I've got no doubt she could do the job, but she could also do it a year or two from now. And part of me is really excited that she gets this opportunity, and part of me really just wants the job -_-. There just aren't enough students finding leadership opportunities on-campus; There are lots of self-created ones, like the ones that come with working with the student voice association or creating a club, but there are always a lot more applicants for Orientation Leader and Residential Community Advisor positions than there are positions. I have a feeling in about two years I'll look back with a lot more perspective, but right now I'm just sort of aggrivated. With the limited time I have at MICA, I'm just trying to make the most of possible experiences outside of my studio work, because I feel like those will make a big difference when it comes to applying to graduate programs in student affairs. And I miss being as active on-campus as I was as an RA and DA and member of SVA... On the plus side, I did get a nomination for student leader for the second year in a row, and my Paschal Seder is in the runnng for program of the year (I think we can pull honorable mention, but I'm not sure all of the competition). Also, can you imagine the student affairs nightmare that VA Tech represents? Tough times for those residential coordinators, hall directors, and RA's.

A recent e-mail from my aunt: Life is full of disappointments, sorry to say, and hopefully this will be your worst. You know what "they" say, it's better to have loved and lost...then never to have loved at all! Life is a risk...we all have to be brave enough to take them and learn from them. Some day, we will talk about Jeff and you will learn how many times he has loved and lost, but never gives up the quest to find the person he can make a life with. It's funny, because at this point I'm getting over the loss of romantic love, I'm starting to get over the ideal/idol complex of that person (J) being The One, moving on in some pretty significant strides. But, from where I sit right now, I would have made a damn fine RA next year, and I continue to be stunned in the turn of events. If Residence Life defends itself from me by asking me to resign as a course of action, if they choose to do that as opposed to defending all the good I've done in this job, and that I still have a ton to offer residents, then ResLife isn't making the right decisions. ResLife needs to be about students first, and not about keeping it's pristine reputation. The one thing this job truly lacked for me was a feeling of understanding and humanity on a regular basis...sometimes I feel like it's more of a business (business of making parents of under-classmen at MICA happy with their students' living situations) than an art (the art of helping students develop as individuals by advising on conflict resolution, educating, programming effectively, and enforcing policies). I screwed up, in more ways than one, but it's not my fault if a resident makes a poor decision for the last time. When does bureaucray and appearances take a back seat to doing the -real- work, the kind that cannot be measured or administered like disciplinary actions? When does a resident have to defend making the same mistake over and over, and everyone knowing about it? As a department, when does Residence Life genuinely choose care of students over care of the department? I know the two are intertwined hopelessly, but people make mistakes. Residents do, residents get second, third, fourth chances. When does Residence Life realize that RA's are just as much works-in-progress as our residents? The thing that frustrates me the most is that I've worked so hard on building personal relationships with my residents in the past two months, in really understanding them, opening up for them a little and recieving the same sort of opening up from them. Whatever blog posts I made that may have tarnished reputations, my own and those of others, appear to be long gone. Not a single resident of mine has guessed accurately why I was asked to resign, not by a long shot. In the course of thirty hours, where the public at large had access to various and sundry entries for which I would later be dooced, 18 people TOTAL spent more than 0:09 (nine seconds) on my blog's site. I just find it hard to believe that if a resident points out a poor decision made by an RA (that didn't threaten lives and was an honest mis-take) while being met with over something that they did wrong (incense, drinking, pot, throwing things off of balconies, whatever), that Residence Life can't take the position of "That's his/her poor decision, and they have to answer for it just like you have to; Now, let's talk about the better choice(s) you coul have made." Maybe if Residence Life at MICA allowed my mistake, allowed me to own up to it to my residents, say what I did and what I should have done, maybe ResLife at MICA wouldn't be seen as the sort of "police force" it's construed as on a whole. RCA's here are trained not to ignore situations or not report incidents, but it shouldn't be because of being threatened into doing it, it should be for genuine care of well-being of the residents. Eighteen people read my blog after I posted the link on my Facebook profile, and before I un-published some unsavory entries. I know the names of at least six or seven of those. That's 12-13 (consider they each found it so fascinating they told a room-mate: 24-26) residents who "read" my screw-up(s). Out of a few hundred freshmen, at least 45 of whom are my residents and know me well, and another couple dozen who I know well even though they aren't in my community, which really makes the bigger impact? Why can't we be human as RA's, so that our faults and successes are both paid attention to, as opposed to being beacons of light, on which one speck of dirt is an abomination of a distraction? What would happen if ResLife had a blog? What would happen if the list of the incidents, minus names, was posted each week for all to see? I'm just questioning some of the lack of open-ness that's going on here, because 1) It's not like residents are completely imperceptive as to staff dynamics/conflict on staff when it's not brought up to them, and 2) Maybe if Residence Life operated in a thoroughly resident-centered manner, in ALL things, we wouldn't have a whole lot to hide. They'd always do what was best for the residents. A little overly simple, perhaps, as there are certainly cases where it's student versus student(s), but, again, what's so bad about transparency? The reason blogging is so worthwhile to people of my generation is that by giving information openly, there are a lot of gains to be made. Attention, better understanding, releasing feelings. Pretty soon, there will be no un-tarnished MySpace or Facebook for potential employers to look at; this sort of over-sharing instantly is something so characteristic of this generation, and pretty much everyone will screw up eventually. It seems to me that in Student Affairs (in general, not just MICA) rules and procedures are put into place to protect the physical and mental health of residents/the student body and encourage healthy growth and development. But should it be at the cost of the physical and mental health of student-staff? Considering my role as a student leader, doesn't MICA have just as much invested in my well-being as that of a acting-out/misbehaving resident? I guess I just wish someone had told me that by becoming an RA, I would have to cope with everything really well, and that chances given to other members of the student body would no longer be available to me as a member of student staff. I still woulda done it, I still may have even fucked up, but at least I'd have been a little better prepared for being asked to resign. Or maybe not. Maybe it's similar to love in that nobody can warn you how much it's going to hurt, or how you couldn't even have helped screwing up, so full of passion were you ('omg! I did a good job at policy enforcement! I'm not a failure!'). Everyone can try and warn you, but it'll blindside you just the same. And you won't be the same person in love as you were before it. And you won't be the same person after losing something so precious as you were when you "had it all." Whew. And, I'm spent. I'm sure I'll feel very differently while at grad school for these things, and maybe I'll understand my superiors better, but I'm still sort of in shock, truth be told.