Reflecting on Reflecting

Reflecting on one’s experiences is always a challenge. Reflecting on one’s experiences while also attempting to fulfill a prompt for the purposes of a grade is even harder.

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While I love education, an unfortunate but unavoidable consequence of any assignment is that, by virtue of its expectations and grading criteria, the learner becomes more preoccupied with meeting these benchmarks than engaging in authentic learning. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the efficacy of grades (and therefore grading criteria), and I likewise understand that there needs to be some measure of learning. My only point is to highlight the paradoxical nature of assessing student development: the very instruments we use to measure learning also, by their very nature, limit the learning they seek to measure.

I’ve struggled tremendously with this paradox as a student, particularly in the course that accompanies my internship experience. A requirement for passing the course, these blog posts were intended to help us reflect on our personal and professional growth this semester. However, I couldn’t help but feel limited by them, if only because each of our blog posts had to correspond to a professional competency dictated by The Intentional Student Affairs Practitioner, which served as the required course text. To be sure, these competencies are worthwhile to reflect upon and develop. But what about those areas of growth that the field of higher education hasn’t codified? Do they not matter?

And so, to conclude my semester-long reflection, I intend to go “off script” and acknowledge those areas that the field of higher education doesn’t necessarily consider with regard to professional growth.

This semester has been, without a shadow of a doubt, the hardest in all of my graduate career. This semester, I have worked three jobs that amount to approximately 34 hours of work a week, on top of a full-time graduate courseload. This semester, I have served as pseudo/quasi/interim/acting director of an living learning village that houses over 600 students, all whilst working part-time, and without any real support or supervision (for context, I was hired as a graduate assistant when the existing director was transitioning out of her role, and there was quite literally no other staff within the village to manage day-to-day operations, much less supervise me). And this semester, I have experienced more adversity trying to fulfill all of my professional roles than I ever have before in my life.

My story isn’t all bad, though. This semester, between all of my jobs, I have been able to achieve financial independence for the first time in my life, and I’m on track to graduate (with two master’s degrees under my belt, I might add) debt-free. This semester, between all of my jobs, I have been able to move into my first apartment, because of which I now finally feel like a full-fledged adult. And this semester, I have learned that I have more resiliency as a professional than I thought possible.

As for my experiences as an intern at William Peace University’s Center for Student Success, they have cemented just how much of a refuge WPU has been and is to me. When everything seemed to be going wrong in my living learning village graduate assistantship and classes, Peace was my safe haven, my soft place to fall. Put simply, I adore Peace, I adore the people there, and I look forward to walking into work every day I’m scheduled, which is something that can’t be said of any other institution I’ve worked at. From the time I stepped on campus as a fresh-out-of-undergraduate professional, WPU has been the place where I’ve been embraced, supported, and encouraged to pursue my passions. Perhaps most importantly, I feel that I can be my authentic self there – introverted, meticulous, overly anxious, and all. I can vent to my coworkers about my frustrations at NCSU, share photos of my cats, and discuss life outside of work with my colleagues. I genuinely care about them, and I know they genuinely care about me. For all of these things, I owe this institution more than I could ever repay.

All of this is to say that, for me, what I’ve gained most this semester as a result of my professional experiences, both at WPU and elsewhere, is a self-awareness of my capabilities and needs that I hadn’t had before. I know I need to work in a space where I feel that I can be my authentic self, where a life outside of work is acknowledged and encouraged, and where my personal well-being comes first. And while these insights don’t necessarily correspond with higher education’s professional competencies, that shouldn’t (and doesn’t) make them any less valuable.