Twenty-nine days 'til Thirty..."Why are you still here?"...

So I was wracking my brain today in order to come up with some reflective topic to cover in my blog, and then work got in the way, hence the late post...which ironically led me to my topic:

To give a little bit of background information without going into painful detail, I am a Resident Director at the University of Maryland.  In July of this year, I will have completed my sixth year in this position, my first out of graduate school.  Before this position, I was a graduate Residence Director at Appalachian State University for two years.  These are both what we call "live-on" positions, meaning as part of my compensation, I have an apartment in the hall in which I am in charge.  If you do the math on that, combined with my undergraduate years, that is very nearly 12 years living on campus....yeah.

But I digress.  For those of you whom may not be in the Higher Education field, typically, an RD has a shelf-life of somewhere around 3 years before they move on to their next position.  That means that I am...gasp...an anomaly!  Somewhere in around my third year, I started getting asked A LOT "What is your next step", "Will you be here next year?", "Are you job searching?", basically, all variations on the question: "Why are you still here?"

Now I am by no means suggesting that this is an offensive or even unusual question to ask someone who remains in a position like mine for as long as I have.  However, there are a lot of different tones to this question.   From my students, it usually means: "Please don't leave yet." Flattering.  From some co-workers, it really can just be out of curiosity.  But from a lot of people within higher ed, the question is tinged with judgement and comes off sounding more like: "I can't believe you're still an RD!"  (I say this with a disclaimer that not everyone means it that way.)

It's pretty common-place in my field to be surrounded by amazing professionals.  People with a lot of motivation and forward trajectory.  One of the great things about this field is that there is so much room for movement, both positionally and geographically.  It's one of the things that attracted me to the field in the first place.  But from the outside looking in, I really wasn't attracted to the perception that I had that after three, four, five years, people moved-on to the next thing.  I remember a conversation I had during my internship in graduate school with the Director of the Res Life department at Eastern Illinois University.  He had been at EIU for many many years, working his way through the department and really setting down some real roots at EIU.  It was the first time in my then brand new adventure into student development that I had met a high-ranking professional whom was perfectly content at not moving around every few years (if I remember correctly, he had been an RD for quite some time when he started out).  Now, I have since met plenty of other people (especially at UMD) that feel the same way.

It's an unspoken judgement, or perhaps a "behind-the-back" judgement (c'mon, people in student affairs know how gossipy we are about each other) that someone who has been in my position for as long as I have are unmotivated, unchallenged, have no direction, or are just too scared to move forward.  I think that's a really unfair assessment.  And sure, some of this could be internalized judgement, but let's not get all developmental ;-)

From the time we are in kindergarten, we are told that we can do whatever we want, as long as it makes us happy, no matter how much we are paid...as long as we're happy.  The simple fact of the matter is, I love my job.  I'm good at my job.  I like going to work (almost) everyday.  The interactions I have with my students and the tangible ways I can see that I have improved their lives and the countless ways they have added to mine are invaluable and pretty unique to the RD position.  No two days are exactly the same, they constantly keep me on my toes, and my building, as well as my staffs keep getting better and better.  How many people can say that they TRULY love their jobs and that they found the perfect fit for themselves in their first job out of grad school?  Not a whole lot. 

Now I am a realistic person.  I know that I will not and should not be an RD forever.  I have looked at open positions around the country and have come extremely close to applying for more than one of them.  Ultimately, it will take a very special job for me to leave what I am doing and the right timing.  Perfect...no.  But UMD and the department I work for have set the bar pretty high for me as far as future employers go.  And my work here is not yet done...

I will leave you now with a picture of my most current staff.  How could you not love going to work with this motley crew every day?