Student Life Café

“If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

- African Proverb (via)

Read this recently, and it just applies to so much in student affairs/higher ed I had to repost it here…

“The successful company is not the one with the most brains, but the most brains acting in concert.” – Peter Drucker

The success of a team depends on unity and common direction. And that unity and common direction comes from intentional communication, building relationships, listening, sharing stories, and spending time together. It’s not easy work, but it’s work that can’t be ignored.

But the challenge is, this important stuff is the stuff that doesn’t feel like work. Talking about why we’re doing something doesn’t feel as important as planning the next event. Getting to know and understand a team member’s story doesn’t feel like we’re accomplishing much. It almost feels like wasted time.

But it’s not. Being a successful team means working together. And working together means getting the right people in the room, figuring out the problem or goals, and coming up with a solution that everyone has a stake in – that everyone can contribute to. Unity may come before or during the problem solving process, but for a group to become a team, that unity has to happen.

(repost)

My mind has recently been fixated on Seth Godin’s idea of emotional labor from his book Linchpin. It’s the idea that in the past a job meant showing up, putting in the physical work, and clocking out. Jobs today don’t have the same types of physical requirements, but if we really want to make a lasting contribution, or, a lot of times, simply do the job well, we need to put in a different kind of labor – the emotional kind.

Seth puts it this way: “I’m proposing that you embrace the fact that the only thing you get paid for (unless you’re a brilliant programmer, chemist or race car driver) is doing emotional labor. Bringing guts and ideas and love to work when you and others don’t feel like it. That’s your job. And the people who do that the best keep getting rewarded for it. Dishwashers don’t get to whine about their chapped fingers, and white collar workers like us shouldn’t whine about how hard it is to be generous and creative and flexible.” (from here)

This really describes our job, right?

But there are days where I find I’ve done my job without doing much of this. Even in the people business, we can go through the motions or hide behind email and tasks.

We need to be willing to put in the effort to care.

To look that student in the eye and respond to their request person to person.

To hear the story behind the disciplinary case.

To bring a genuine energy when we don’t necessarily feel it.

To be present, make a personal connection, go the extra mile.

That part’s not always easy. It’s work. It’s the reason we get paid to do what we do.

But from what I can tell, it’s also the only place where lasting impact happens – where this job really becomes worth doing.

We live kinda close to where the 4.4 magnitude earthquake happened this morning – close enough to have it wake us at 4 a.m., but not close enough for there to be any damages at all.

Other than lost sleep, it was no big deal, but I expected a call from my ever-loving mom who lives in Texas, so I texted her to let her know everything was fine.

She received the text before she heard news about the quake, and was extremely relieved that (1.) we were ok and (2.) she didn’t have to go through the usual freak-out she feels when she hears about something happening in Southern California.

Sometimes we think communication is about communication, regardless of when it happens. But sometimes preemptive communication can prevent a bulk of our problems by fixing them before they even arise.

In a field filled with laws and regulations, we’re wise to be cautious about how we communicate. But most of the time departments and universities err on the side of waiting to see if anyone notices before we share info. Maybe there are times when sharing proactively instead of reactively can make a world of difference.

How does your department communicate with students? Administration? Parents? The public as a whole?

Sonja Lyubomirsky, author of The How of Happiness, gave some tips for living a happier life in a recent issue of Spirit magazine (Hello, weekend trip on Southwest Airlines). Seeing how happiness plays into how people perceive their fit and connection with a university experience, I’m wondering how any of these pieces could fit within a residence life or student life program …

• Generosity: “Being generous … makes you see others in a more positive light because generosity boosts positive emotions and those emotions create a halo effect, making you feel good about those around you,” Lyumbomirsky said, adding that anonymous acts of kindness raise positivity because they make us feel like a better person.
• Companionship: Doing things with someone else – anyone else, it seems – makes you happier because it strengthens bonds. So, going shopping, hanging out between classes, anything really, can help. “People with stronger and bigger social networks are happier,” she said. “The pleasure you get in the moment of an activity increases when you’re with someone who similarly values the experience.”
• Experience: If you’re going to spend money – spend it on experiences, not stuff. While the stuff gets old (that new car means less after a month or two), experiences provide memories that can fuel happiness for a long time. “They’re renewable, so you’re less likely to adapt to them,” Lyubomirsky says. This is great news for people in student life. I sometimes bemoan the lack of the newest dorms or state-of-the-art facilities, but while those help a college experience, it’s really the environments for connection and opportunities to create memories that matter the most.
• Well-Being: Exercise, not surprisingly, increases endorphins. But it also keeps you in a good mood for the next 12 hours, the magazine quotes a 2009 University of Vermont study as reporting. “Any activity you’re doing to improve yourself physically increases happiness levels,” Lyubomirsky says. “This includes your mental well-being, so meditation and relaxation can do the trick.” Maybe getting people involved in intramurals or that hiking club is a good first step after all. Hey – activity, experience and companionship in one!

I’ve taken some time off recently from reading blogs (ironic, right?) and watching tv. And one thing that’s surprised me is how much my productivity has increased in other areas. I’m suddenly reading more, spending more time with people I value, getting things done I’ve been putting off, and creating more (like this here post).

But I’ve found there’s still the temptation to find other ways to fill the void. See – the two activities I limited are both activities where you absorb – or consume – info. Besides reading, most of the things I want to do are more about creating something or adding meaning to something in the world around me.

But those take energy. Creating can be tough. So it’s easy to slink back to Twitter and see what has changed – to check and see if there’s anything I need to respond to.

Sometimes that’s useful. But a lot of times it’s just procrastination to avoid the tough work of creating.

I think this tension between absorbing and creating has a huge role to play in our professional and personal development.

As someone with input as a top strength on tests like Gallup’s Strengthsfinder, I’m always reading a new blog post, picking up a new book, or scanning twitter for a new idea or connection. And that’s great. It’s who I am. But at some point, I have to remember to do something with that information, or it’s just a big waste of time.

Eventually, life has to become about creating.

To be fair, it can also work the other way. Some of us don’t take time to learn or grow and keep producing the same things over and over again. Or we become so empty we have nothing more to add – nothing left to give to the staff and students around us.

Absorbing a variety of quality information sources can fuel our process of creating – whether it’s planning a new program, coaching a student, or supporting a staff. And creating can actually teach us and grow us more than any type of absorbing alone. Have you ever noticed how many more connections you make when you’re forced to teach something? Or blog about it?

We need both, but it’s all about a balance.

So which one do you “major” in? How do you keep the balance?

The Washington Post has an interesting article on parental notification for alcohol related issues on campus.

An increasing number of schools are moving to a “notify every time there’s any type of alcohol violation” policy on the heels of more serious alcohol-related tragedies. Not surprisingly, the move isn’t fully supported by everyone, but some states have even moved to requiring it.

I found it interesting that regardless of how schools handle the process, when notification does happen, it works best with some coaching:

The effects of parental notification have not been widely studied, but the concept seems to work best when universities coach parents on how to react to the news, said Thomas Workman of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators, who chairs a committee focused on alcohol education. Officials need to be mindful of family dynamics and cultural differences, he said.

“We can’t assume a parent knows what to do and that they would do the right thing,” he said. But if approached in the right way, parents can be the perfect partners for an intervention, he said.

Typically if we are going to require parental notification, we ask the student to contact his or her parents and the parents must contact us to let us know they’ve had that conversation within a certain amount of time. I’m wondering whether there are ways we can better support the parents in that process as well. (And I’m sure there are some legal nuances all the way through that…)

How does your school relate to parents when there are alcohol-related incidents?