This has been a really interesting semester so far. In the same moment I feel incredibly connected and equally disconnected from campus life and LMU. I like to call this the "Senior Year Syndrome." I say Senior Year because this is my fourth year as an RD and Meredith and I keep joking that it is our senior year. While we joke around about it, I have found myself being very nostalgic all of a sudden. Last week was our Student Affairs Convocation and I found myself welling up a few times and having the thought of "how in the hell am I going to top this at another institution?" cross my mind. The same thing happened after MESA's first reflection of the year. The suite in charge did an absolutely incredible job and got the others to reflect on a level that was rare for this early in the year. I turned to Tom King, tears in my eyes, and said "How am I ever going to leave?"
I know it is only just October, but I am already freaking out about next year. I know that a fifth year as an RD simply isn't in the cards, but I am not ready to leave LMU. Frankly, I'm not sure if I'm ready to leave the land of RDs. Here's the thing...I really love being an RD. I love supervising a staff, working with learning communities, and I'm just as excited about program ideas and publicity now as I was my first year as an RA. That should say something, right? I'll admit that I am totally over being on duty and being on the bottom of the food chain, but when I see where the focus of the AD job is, I don't get excited. I'm not excited about running committees, being on a leadership team, having 100s of e-mails to respond to, or dealing with the inner workings of personalities and power dynamics. Unfortunately, I know that the further up you go, the further you get away from students (which seems completely counterintuitive), but what's a girl to do?
I had a dream the other night that I took our AVP for Student Life to lunch and told him that I was too valuable to lose. I am apparently very bold in my dreams! I told him that I was well-respected and well-connected on campus, had made some very valuable contributions and that it would be stupid of him to lose me to another institution. I then laid out the departments that I thought could use my "talents" (dream Marci's words, not reality Marci's!) and what type of position he should create for me. Since this was a dream, he agreed immediately and we spent the rest of our lunch ordering dessert and drafting a position description. On the car ride back he asked me to name my salary and to choose an on-campus apartment that I would like to live in. Show of hands, who wants to live in my dreams with me? Sounds pretty amazing, right?
Since we live in reality and not in Dreamland, I need to be realistic. People in the department are only able to go to conferences if they are presenting or on a committee so it's not like we are rolling in dough here at LMU. The likelihood of a position being created for me is slim to none at this point and I haven't heard any gossip of others in the Division leaving so where does this leave me? Preparing to say goodbye to a place that has transformed both my head and heart? I feel like the majority of people who leave the RD job are happy to do so. Not necessarily because they hated the job or were unhappy, but because they are genuinely excited about where they are off to next.
The tricky part about that for me is that LMU is where I want to be next. I want to be in Southern California. I want to be a a Jesuit school. I want to be at a mission-driven institution. I want to be at a school that doesn't just talk about social justice and service as abstract ideas, but makes these concepts reality for students on a minute-to-minute basis. I want to be at a school that inspires me. What is a girl to do when her check-list for her perfect institution is her current institution?
I think that working with a staff has been the hardest thing about transitioning out of the RD position. I'm still getting student involvement and some programming, and in my position I'm getting some learning community stuff. And I really like coming to my (off campus!) home in the evenings and staying there until the next morning, with no concerns about duty calls. But, in some ways, I still miss late-night meetings, mainly because that was a big part of having student staff. That's definitely the part I miss the most.
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