As a senior in college, you would think that I’ve gotten my act together and figured out what exactly it is that I want to do with my life. While I think I have a pretty grounded idea, this idea only came to me exactly a week ago while having a conversation with one of my superiors at my job.
I work for Housing, Residents Life and Dining Services, and have done so for the last 3 years of my life. During this time I have enjoyed watching and guiding the residents that I’ve worked with in the right direction to achieve their ultimate goal. While having absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with my own life. I have inspired residents to change their majors to something that would make them a lot happier, I have encouraged residents to become active in their academic careers and get involved not only in extracurricular actives but with housing as well.
So while at a recruitment fair trying to answer as many questions for people wanting to get involved in this organization, my boss asked me to share my story about how I got involved and what made me want to keep coming back. She’d known me for all three years I’d worked for housing, but never really knew how it was I came to be a part of this organization and why I loved it so much. So I explained to her that when I came to my university, I was not only a transfer student but an older non-traditional student as well. I was ignored, treated horrible and I almost transferred to another school because I was so miserable; all within the first month of my first semester at this college. But then, on my birthday my freshman year, I met the building director and ended up having an hour long conversation with her, which was unheard of because they are usually so busy. After that meeting, she encouraged me to work for housing, and while I’ve had my ups and downs within this organization it was the best decision I’ve ever made.
After hearing my story, and talking about why I wanted to stay, we started talking about how transfer students are an under-recognized and under-appreciate member of most campus societies. This is also a sad thing because it makes up a much larger portion of the community as well. So we started talking about it and she asked me if I’d ever thought about going into student affairs and working with transfer students. Well, I work for housing and at least everybody who has worked for housing has at least thought of working for student affairs at least once in their careers. But after this conversation, I really started to think about it; I started to think about how I’ve interacted with the residents that I’ve worked with and I realized something… this is a completely viable career for me, in which I can picture myself doing.
Do this blog is about my journey, trying to figure out what I want to do with my life. Figuring out if I actually do want to work get into student affairs or if I want to do something completely different.
Finding my way, 