July is a time of preparation and training. Training new professionals in new work environments and taking [bitter] returning professionals along for the ride. Preparations for student staff to arrive back on campus for training and/or for help in preparing for month of August and everything that it requires. There is so much going on and so little time, it seems. Where did the end of May and all of June go? Oh, yeah, I took a two-week vacation. Having a significant amount of work to do and preparations to make and trainings to sit through has not prevented my mind from wandering and it has been pondering what could be considered an important question. Why am I in student affairs and who am I as a professional?

A part of this has stemmed from recent professional staff training where entire blocks of the training schedule are dedicated to team builders, socials, or training sessions where less than 5% of the information is new. As a residence life staff are notorious for being the positive, ice breakers every second there is a pause, and wanting to work with people because they’re so extroverted type. That, in my experience, has been true over 70% of the time. Alas, I am not. I am a realist. Icebreakers are abominations. After two bouts of small-talk I need a nap. I’ve been thinking. Is this for me?

I have already considered whether I am jumping to conclusions based on what is a minute amount of annoyances, but I have over two years of professional experience within the same job and no matter how many supervisors I have had (4-5) and staff’s I have supervised (3^rd completely different one starting soon) my perspective on these activities or on my style have not altered very much. Why did I want to be a student affairs professional? Do I still have that same drive now? As I was contemplating this I texted a dear friend asking a simple question: Do you think I make a good student affairs professional? Earmuffs, kids, but she said “Absolfuckinglootly no doubt!!”

When further pressed, she expanded her statement to “I think you are because you have drive to make student and staff experiences different. You try and make a clear path for systems and structures. You are a strong mentor and leader. Your supervision skills have developed providing purpose and guidance. Through your work without full acknowledgement of students you make a large impact on their navigation through the system.” Thanks Edna Murrieta!

Existential crisis avert . . . let’s be honest; it was only delayed.

Overwatch character Lucio DJing on a hologram

This week I wanted to chat with you all about music as it is one of the things that I cannot work/live without. I always have Spotify playing some obscure new artists or random German industrial (just ask my staff – they think it’s weird). Music is important to me as it has been one of the things that helped me throughout my life. The right song has the potential to make my day better or motivate me to take on new challenges. I wanted to take a little bit of time to chat about music.

Music is capable of many medical feats; Collingwood (2016) concisely lists that music has contributed to the relief of depression in elderly persons, reduce the likelihood of burnout in nursing students, and general reduction of stress and proliferation of positive sensations. If music can influence your health can it also help in other areas? According to research conducted by Teresa Lesiuk the answer is yes. Lesiuk’s (2005) study noted that the mood and quality of work was lowest with the group that did not have music. It may come as a surprise, but the group in Lesiuk’s (2005) study that had access to no music also spent the most time on task; they worked more and achieved a poorer result.

Not all music is created equal though. Music with lyrics can, in some cases, produce less productivity (Shih, Huang, & Chiang, 2012). According to an old instructor listening to music without lyrics could motivate the brain, but those with lyrics would prove more distracting due to the brain automatically focusing on recognizing and understanding the words. I partially believe this logic… although I currently listening to vocal trance music to write this post. Sorry professor!

What does this all mean? 

Why did I bother writing this post, especially since there is no music attached to it? Well, I want there to be people who read this post and then go and build a “tomorrow’s my deadline playlist” (for future projects, of course). While you are writing that end of semester report, know that it is okay to use the below playlist of epic music to increase your productivity. Playing music in your office is not unprofessional or unwelcoming. In my own many cases, it has helped students realized there was a person in the mysteriously ajar office. In one case, several students and I jammed to an artist I had just discovered.

Music is inextricably tied to ever changing concepts such as work environment or professionalism. There are work environments that have not updated their expectations for a changing world that is more critical of why they must adapt to companies instead of companies adapting to the talent they have recruited. Too often organizations tacitly or actively believe that persons must adapt to the organizational standards rather. You must dress this way, you must act this way, you must never appear to be unprofessional by the standards in this 59-page document you signed that showed that you read the rules and regulations. The enforcement of policies is not consistent and in some cases, presents itself on discriminatory lines.

What does this all mean? It means that I support altering work environments. I support those who can wear jeans and still retain the powers of doing their job. I support music because the evidence shows that it works to make not just employees, but people, better.

To Employers

I have been a part of work environments that actively discourage music, singing, and demand you only work on those tasks to which you are assigned. They were soul-crushingly boring and my work suffered because I was unable to focus on such a tedious task for too long. I would arrive at 8:00 and leave by 5:00 only to feel miserable about my day. Eventually I began to become less and less engaged with my work and more engaged with doing homework, writing papers, and other academic work instead of the task at hand.

I do not want to be that person again. I do not want to waste my time as a professional or the time of my organization and for me to do this I need work environments to change with the times. I am not suggesting every organization mimic Google or other multi-billion dollar companies. It can be as simple as allowing Pandora, Spotify, or other music streaming to be installed on office computers. Are you truly dedicated to retaining your employees as well as maximizing their potential? Take an extra step and offer premium accounts because the worst possibility is that an ad for your competitor plays.

Take a chance. Listen to the anti-procrastination playlist I was introduced to a long time ago by a friend.

Anti-Procrastination Playlist: https://8tracks.com/kimtsan/the-ultimate-anti-procrastination-mix

Works Cited

Collingwood, J. (2016). The Power of Music To Reduce Stress. Psych Central. Retrieved on October 23, 2017, from https://psychcentral.com/lib/the-power-of-music-to-reduce-stress/

Lesiuk, T. (2005). The effect of music listening on work performance. Psychology of Music, 33(2), 173-191. Retrieved on October 23, 2017, from http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0305735605050650

Shih, Y., Huang, R., & Chiang, H. (2012). Background music: Effects on attention performance. Work, 42(4), 573-578. doi:10.3233/WOR-2012-1410

During my institution’s “spring break” we are still expected to be in the office working, preferably from 8:00-4:30. I decided that this was not the life for me  in mid-February and I promptly took the entire week off because I HAVE vacation time and I SHOULD use every single day I am contractually granted.

Again, for those in the back: I promptly took the entire week off because I HAVE vacation time and I SHOULD use every single day I am contractually granted.

I have written about Burnout before and like I have said before it is a “scary” word in student affairs. “Don’t get burnt out” and “Be sure to self-care” are phrases uttered in some fashion constantly by supervisors everywhere (myself included). What happens after we give our warnings? We wait until the symptoms of burnout present themselves again before offering the same eerie warning. When do we, as supervisors or as professionals, actively work with our peers and supervisees to assist in the creation of these habits before they are necessary?

I will be the first to admit that I absolutely hate the idea of using my vacation days. I continue to pretend that I will save them all of for this giant, great adventure during the summer. What else could be a factor here? Conditional response to limited breaks due to years of compulsory and then a couple of years of higher education: check. Structural (field-wide) discouragement of separating yourself from work during any time other than a break: check. Residence Life being a functional area where entry-level staff are expected to be present nearly 24/7: check. I am conditioned to think saving my days and using them during the summer is the most “appropriate” way to use my time off. The most appropriate time for me to use my time away is when I need or want it.

(Alt Text: Courtney Cambell @courtneyekeeler : #SAchat am I alone in being desensitized to the buzzphrase of “self-care” in SA? Since when is actually taking my lunch hour “self-care”?)

 I saw the preceding Tweet the other day… My favorite line from it is “Since when is actually taking my lunch hour ‘self-care’?” I immediately saved it so that I could come back and share it with fellow professionals because I think it may strike a chord with many. For me, many of my lunch breaks last less than 30 and too often are less than 15 minutes in duration. Self-care in student affairs has become the utilization of normal pieces of employment instead of work. This behavior becomes normalized early on in a professional’s career, which probably contributes to high burnout rates. We have become so desensitized that a job where you can have a full hour lunch and regularly leave at the end of the day is like winning the World Cup.

I took a vacation and I liked it. I think I’ll take another one. I will take my full hour of lunch or respite even if most of it is a stroll around the campus munching on a sandwich. These are relatively small things, but if many new professionals rebel against infringement of these small things we may see the day when working through lunch four days of the week is no longer an expectation.

Last semester with the retirement of a highly powerful mage that worked in my office I was bestowed the responsibility of key and FOB master (Fobs are Near Field Communication devices that we use instead of small chips in ID cards). Being entrusted with these newly assigned tasks was unexpected and it was welcome even though this meant that my own level of accountability needed to increase as well. For anyone who has ever worked in Residence Life the sheer number of keys can be absolutely overwhelming because you need several keys for each room in addition to any office keys. Furthermore anyone who has had access to or responsibility for a “master” key is aware of the significant financial and employment risks if that key is missing after your name is the last one to use it. Keys force a person to become more organized because they are equivalent to a person’s safety within their residence hall.

This post is not meant to simply say “I AM THE KEY MASTER, MWAHAHAHA!” but I have recently come back into power over keys and FOBs. However, this time I have been a little more reflective and trying to wonder why I like this so much (other than the obvious answer of “You’re weird”).

Reason 1: Detective Work

Weird things happen in communities of humans. When I see a random key or FOB on my desk I already have a smile on my face because I now have a mystery to solve! I really enjoy the process of determining whose key/FOB that I have with little to no information. Oftentimes my co-workers will hear me exclaim “Well that’s interesting” after making a discovery that gets me closer to the truth. Work days can become rather dull and I like these small adventures.

Reason 2: Creating Procedures

In just a couple of days I have completed 95% of a written procedure guide for student and professional staff because I had seen weaknesses in our system and wanted to correct them. I was given unbridled (more or less) creativity to do whatever I needed to make the system more manageable, traceable, and easy to understand/teach. Our office workers were integral to this process because I sought their feedback to ensure that we were creating procedures that were easy not only for professional/office staff, but for students as well.

Reason 3: Forced Organization

From chaos I created order. While doing minimal detective work and create procedures I felt that I was using magic to clear up a mess from a dramatic sequence in a film. As I mentioned earlier, keys are a high accountability subject and they need to be in their proper place. This forces me to be organized because there is little room for the phrase “I’ll figure it out later.”

I know that I have an adventure tomorrow as I still have a mystery or two to solve.

I do not think that it is any secret that I am oriented more towards challenge than support. Sanford (1962) made it particularly clear that you need a dash of both rather than a stiff dose of one or the other, but over the past several years of supervision experience I have learned that I am prone to offering challenge from the start.

Throwback: In July as a part of training the full-time professional staff was asked to carefully consider one word that represents themselves personally and professionally. I originally disdained this activity because there were so many words that I felt applicable. I actually spent hours searching through the depths of online thesauruses and dictionaries before I finally settled on one word: heuristic.

My one word for the 2016-2017 year.

Throwback continued: I come from a liberal arts college where critical thinking permeated every single part of my studies. I was constantly challenged to look at my assumptions, look for hidden meanings, and connect to contemporary happenings in an effort to better understand why they were occurring at that specific moment. I was not often given a direct answer, but pushed to find my own. Even when I thought I had answered the battle was only half won; I still needed to defend my assertion.

My entire academic experience was built on challenge and resisting support (I am sure my old supervisors have some potentially funny stories of me refusing help). My graduate assistantship experiences have also helped solidify my gravitation towards challenge.

Fun fact: I once received anonymous feedback that “Shane doesn’t directly answer your question. He asks a lot of questions that make you realize that you already knew the answer. It would have been faster if he just answered the question.”

Yes, it would have saved both of us quite a significant chunk of time, but I do not think that it would have been beneficial in the long run to simply answer the question. I still believe in the importance of helping students realize that they have a lot of the answers they seek.

Then it all changed when the fire nation attacked…. (Avatar: The Last Airbender reference, sorry). It was a very different experience while in the midst of student staff training at an institution that I had spent only a month at. My staff, especially the new resident assistants, needed me to help facilitate their learning and to help them understand the pieces of crucial training: they needed support. Incidentally several of my staff members may have disliked me at the beginning of the fall because instead of directly answering the question, I asked what they thought was the answer and asked questions instead of simply answering the question.

I was not being the supervisor that they needed. They were surrounded by returning staff members whose main preoccupation was asking why things were different from last year (a post on change is in the works for the future). They experience long days filled with information. They were not even sure what was the most relevant information that they received from those days. I would not call my first several support conversations “successful” but they were not failures engulfed in flames. I steadily began to develop skills in offering support, mainly because, with time, I learned to support only pieces that needed support. Instead of trying to re-teach the entire day of training, I began to listen more attentively and ask questions to clarify what the crux of the question was.

This has taken many forms. I still regularly allow a moment of silence before asking “So, what is it that you are asking?” I do this mostly for those who unwittingly unleash a monsoon of information, to provide background but easily lose themselves in the narrative. I repeat questions back using alternative language that makes more sense to me, to see if we are on the same page. And then I answer the question when I have the answer. If I do not have an answer, I find it and ensure those asking the question do too.

Whenever you find yourself contemplating challenge it is important to remember that no matter what you are better at giving, you must develop the necessary skills in the other. There will come a time where a student who has received a lot of support will need challenge. Likewise, there will come a time where those constantly challenged will need a little help.

Disclaimer: There is probably no paradox involved in this, but I can only think of titles that are alliteration.

When I was interviewing for my first time full-time job I was really excited about the use of co-created supervision rubrics based on individualized conversations with staff members and I used it in my answers. Once I accepted my first full time role, I was excited to meet my staff so I could put this answer into practice. I was pushing aside the necessary preparation work until I had a full product ready for testing. The error of my ways has resurfaced in my consciousness recently and has refused to dissipate until I acknowledge it.  I procrastinated; I pushed back working on this project because of the prominence of other products, training, or work.

Even today I do not have the supervision rubric that I envisioned months ago, but I do have insight to offer the world about procrastination. Honestly, I am not entirely convinced I am speaking of procrastination but about our perception of time in student affairs. Within student affairs there is always a perceived “off-season” where our loads of work will not be as large or immediate and all those projects, tweaks, and changes that need to be made can be created, explained, and implemented. For many functional areas this time is likely to be summer. I admit readily that I am currently suffering from this right now. I have identified this “summer” as a time where I will be able to perfect the changes I have already made and develop the changes I still want to make. Is it possible?

Hindsight is interesting because a person can see all the warning signs and blame themselves for not noticing then. Foresight is interesting because a person can see the possibilities but forgets the earthly complications that already exist in our daily lives. For me I find it easy to forget that summer is a time in which I will not live in a bubble where all of my responsibilities are absent. I am still to complete my obligations, but they will look differently than during an academic year.

Summer is not a panacea for the work we have failed to set time aside for.

Groundbreaking, isn’t it? I shared that statement with a respectable coworker. See their response below. 

We are all in this paradox together. We are still going to think “I have to wait until summer to do this” or “I can’t do this until summer.” You may be unable to tackle an entire project or lead a departmental change right now, but what you are able to do at this point is lay the groundwork. Maybe it is ten minutes a day writing down your ideas. Find yourself with half an hour before the end of the work day? Begin by creating a timeline or a list of persons you need to work with to make this project a reality. There are ample things you can do right now to make your summer project a reality and not simply a magical time where you have deposited all the changes you need/want to make. I believe in us and you should too.