Rosie Perez:
We had a conversation yesterday about how this pandemic has just really worked people’s sense of time and that everything’s immediate. Every meeting is instantaneous. All you need to do is click the link. There’s no breaks. People don’t eat or use the bathroom. They just, they don’t build in breaks anymore because all you gotta do is click.

Keith Edwards:
Hello and Welcome to Student Affairs Now I’m your host, Keith Edwards. Today we’re discussing how individuals, leaders and institutions can work to better create work environments and lives for student affairs professionals, with the editor and two authors of the new book, Creating Sustainable Careers in Student Affairs.

Keith Edwards:
Student Affairs Now is the premier podcast and learning community, for those of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We hope you’ll find these conversations, make a contribution to the field and are restorative to the profession. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays. Find us at studentaffairsnow.com or on Twitter. Today we have two sponsors. First of all, is LeaderShape. LeaderShape is the not-for-profit organization that has been partnering with colleges, universities, and organizations in creating transformational leadership experiences since 1986, with a focus on creating a more just caring and thriving world LeaderShape provides both virtual and in-person leadership development opportunities for students and professionals.

Keith Edwards:
When you partner with Leadershape, you will receive quality, developmental experiences that engage learners and topics of courageous, dialogue, integrity, equity, resilience, and community building to find out more about their programs. Please visit leadershape.org/virtualprograms. You can also connect with them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Today’s episode is also brought to you by Stylus publishing, which published the book we’re focused on today. Stylus is proud to be a sponsor of Student Affairs Now podcasts browse us their student affairs, diversity and professional development titles at Styluspub.com. Use promo code SANow for 30% off all books plus free shipping. You can find Stylus on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter @Styluspub. As I mentioned, I’m your host, Keith Edwards, my pronouns arre he/him/his. I’m a speaker consultant and coach. You can find out more about me at keithedwards.com. I’m hosting today’s conversation from Minneapolis, Minnesota, which is the ancestral Homeland of the Dakota and Ojibwe peoples. Today, we’re unpacking contexts perspectives and recommendations for changing the culture of work in student affairs. We’ve got fabulous guests today. Let’s meet them. Please share with us your name, your role, your pronouns, and how you’ve contributed to this project. Let’s start off with Rosie.

Rosie Perez:
Hey everybody. My name is Dr. Rosie Perez. I use she/her pronouns and I’m an Associate Professor of Higher Education at the University of Michigan. Today, I joined you from Ann Arbor, which occupies the lands of the Anishinaabe or people of the three fires, mainly the Chippewa, Ottawa, and Potawatomi nations. One area of my research focuses on the professional socialization of graduate students, including folks in student affairs. And I’m really interested in the implications that socialization has not just on experiences in graduate school, but what happens to after graduate school. So with that said, I wrote a chapter on student affairs, graduate, preparation programs and how they can work to uphold or contest ideal worker norms. As we prepare people to work in the field. I’ll also say that as a faculty member, I’m in a higher ed program, I literally am doing this every day, right? So I am very mindful about the messages that I send to students and how I might model or push against ideal worker norms every day.

Keith Edwards:
Oh, so exciting. There’s that word? Ideal worker norms. We’re going to unpack that here in a little bit. So glad you’re with us. Rosie. Ben, tell us a little bit about you.

Ben Stubbs:
Thanks Keith. My name is Ben Stubbs he/him. I serve as the Director of Student Engagement at the University of West Florida, where I’m also an adjunct adjunct instructor for the college student affairs administration master’s program. As a campus life professional, I’ve had the opportunity to work in campus recreation with fraternity story life, student activities, leadership, and service, variety of other programs. And so I was happy to work with and speak with my colleagues in those areas to provide a chapter to the book related to their experiences and how they navigate and try to work through the expectations related to their work.

Keith Edwards:
Awesome. We’re glad you’re here. Ben and Margaret you’re the editor that put all of this together, framed it brought in the two authors we have and many other folks. Tell us a little bit more about you.

Margaret Sallee:
Thanks Keith. So my name’s Margaret Sallee. I use she/her pronouns. I’m an Associate Professor and the Program Coordinator for the Higher Education program at the University at Buffalo. UB is located on the lands of the Seneca nation, which is a member of the Onkwehonwehnéha Six Nations Literacy. And my work typically focuses on work family issues and work-life issues, which is why this book is so near and dear to my heart. I look at the ways that faculty, staff and students navigate work and life issues and the implications this has for folks in different angles. So as you mentioned, I brought the cast of characters together for this book and conceptualized it with a lot of help from all the authors who brought the book and ways and directions that I actually hadn’t originally conceptualized.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah. I love it. When a project emerges into something different along the way let’s start with you, Margaret, can you tell us a little bit about what are the challenges facing student affairs workers, the profession today come and give us a summary of where we’re at. I know people talk about this a lot and people cite a lot of numbers and it seems to really shift and vary, but you’ve been really thinking about this, tell us what, what really is going on.

Margaret Sallee:
Well, I mean, sort of what Rosie was talking about. We, we do this work on a daily basis, right? And our faculty members is we’re talking to students and, you know, for the last 10 years or so, I’ve, I’ve seen my students coming into my office and just being exhausted. And I’ve been talking with folks who are new in the profession and mid-level in the profession and senior, and folks are exhausted. And so I think that, you know, there, there are a lot of challenges I think, first off, right? We see a lot of attrition on the field. You know, earlier studies said that 50% of folks leave the field in their first five years. And that is problematic. You know, partially we could talk about whether or not there’s some growing pains that happens as folks enter the field in their mid twenties and figure out that, there might be other directions for them.

Margaret Sallee:
But I think that there are conditions in the field that are creating problems. So, you know, as we talked about folks feeling overwhelmed, working long hours you know, especially the demands of working in residence life can be all consuming as Ben can talk about, right? As he learned in his chapter and probably from working in past, working in student activities can be very exhausting. So folks are really just working 24/7. They are feeling like they need to be the ideal worker, which we’ll talk about I’m sure a little bit later. And that’s just that leads to burnout. So you’re no longer invested in the, in the work they’re experiencing also secondary trauma since our students are coming in with so many issues now. There’s also the, okay, of the field, we all love the work. But sometimes people look outside to industry to see what they could do perhaps that might compensate them better. So there’s this whole host of issues. I mean, that’s just, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Right. But yeah, I think those are some of the issues that I’ve seen, right?

Keith Edwards:
You’re talking about people leaving the field for different reasons, reminds me of college students who leave an institution, right? Some of them leave for, cause it’s not the right place for them, that they’re better not being in it. That is a good choice for them to leave. And then others, it is a miss. We have not served them that they, you know, and you started thinking about the profession that way. For some people, they learn the girl and they figure out something else is better for them. And then others have been mismanaged, have poor leadership, have had unrealistic expectations and you’re pointing to the exhaustion and drama. And just two of our most popular, most viewed, most listened to episodes have been two episodes on trauma and burnout and compassion, fatigue. So both the trauma we’re experiencing. And then as you mentioned, the secondary trauma with students,

Ben Stubbs:
Something else I might add to that Keith is in addition to leading the field, those are the same reasons. People leave their positions to go to positions at other institutions. And while certainly it’s great for folks to pursue whatever new opportunities they would like if they think that’s best for them and their families. In my experience, a lot of times when people leave it’s because they are feeling these things in their current position. They still want to stay in student affairs. And a lot of times they do stay in student affairs, but they transitioned to another university which creates a vacancy, which creates overload on the other people in the office. And it’s really disruptive to the work environment and to the experience of the rest of the team. And so there are those impacts in addition to just leaving the field there, those impacts even when folks leave positions and stay in the field, right.

Keith Edwards:
Or move to other functional areas that they think won’t be as 24/7. But then I’m also reminded of a couple of senior student affairs folks who felt like the position was too much at this institution. The expectations were unrealistic and they, they moved to another institution. And now it’s 24/7. I remind them the only commonality is you. So maybe how do you think through some of this? And but we do get caught in these patterns, particularly a senior folks who have been under this ideal worker norm and these expectations. And this is what a real student affairs professional is when you’ve been doing that for 30 years, it’s hard to shift those patterns. Margaret, maybe you can tell us a little bit more about this ideal worker, this concept, where does it come from and how does that really help us understand and challenge some of what’s going on?

Margaret Sallee:
Yeah, thank you. So 30 years ago trying to do the math Joe Acker and Joan Williams, sort of at the same time, he came up with this concept of the ideal worker and basically the ideal worker refers to, it’s not a good thing. So let’s just start there. Even the ideal is, is in the title, right? It basically refers to the employee who is always working and always available to the organization. So, and the flip side, the concurrent piece is that the person has a wife and I use this language very intentionally, right? Very much. It’s a heteronormative heterosexist construct. Who’s available at home to take care of any family responsibilities. So this means that an employee could work nights could work. Weekends could just dry pick things up at the drop of the hat and go on a trip. Obviously this is what organizations depend on in order to be successful.

Margaret Sallee:
So the, the right there are so many consequences here that folks feel like they have to work all the time to advance. You know, I was just in a meeting where folks were being praised for working all the time. And we still, even though that we challenged this as a, as a construct, at least in this space where challenging, and there’s a real recognition that if you want to get ahead, you gotta put your time in and you gotta gotta be responsive. I would also say with student affairs in particular, that’s framed as you need to be always available for your students. So, right. If a student has an issue at 11:00 PM, you need to be responsive. You put yourself after the needs of your students.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah. I think I hear this just on its face, irrational, right. If you’re always available all the time, like that doesn’t make any sense, but I, I hear it justified with while your salary not hourly. So that’s what that means. I hear justified with aren’t you committed to your students. And I hear it justified with, I did it when I was an RD. Right. Which is the same thing that justifies hazing. Right. That’s the same rationale that, that goes into some of that. So thanks for, thanks for setting this up and framing sort of the challenge of people leaving the field, exhaustion, the burn out the trauma, but then also this notion of ideal worker, and we’re going to trouble this before we get in here from here from Ben and from Rosie you edited the book, you wrote several of the chapters, you framed it, you organized it, you also were invited lots of different people in, could you kind of give us an overview of the book, which people can get from Stylus with our discount code at 30% off it’s available now. So go ahead, but kind of give us a walkthrough of the book overall.

Margaret Sallee:
Yeah. Thank you. So the book is divided into three different parts, right? And the first part really is an introduction to ideal worker norms and how it affects the work of the profession. So Ben has a chapter in there where he is looking at the impact on folks in particular functional areas. We all, as you brought up folks in residence life in particular are dealing with these ideal worker norms on a daily basis. One chapter just dedicated to residence life professionals. There’s a different chapter that looks at differences by institution, because what it means to be the ideal worker at a research university and student affairs is different than in community colleges. And it’s different at a small liberal arts colleges. I’m sure you’re probably thinking to themselves. Yeah, that’s true. Right. Rosie has this tremendous chapter in the first part about socialization to graduate school and sort of socializations of graduate students.

Margaret Sallee:
So that’s the, that’s the first part of the texts. The middle part is when I talk about what folks brought to the project that I couldn’t have envisioned, I mean, I shouldn’t have, because I invited them, but it’s really about the mental health impact. Right? So where you talked about one of your, one of your most popular podcasts being about compassion, fatigue, and burnout, that , we have a couple of chapters dedicated exactly to that thinking through affairs professionals experienced that, but also how Para-pros RAs in this case might experience burnout and compassion fatigue. And one of my favorite chapters in the book, although they’re all my favorites, of course is one chapter that is coauthored by Pamela Graglia, Karla Pérez-Vélez, and D-L Stewart on sort of this notion of self care, right? And that around all the time that we need to think about self care, which is not what we need to do and that we need to think about S care and neo-liberalism has really pushed student affairs into this direction of abandoning the individual.

Margaret Sallee:
Right. or focusing on the individual, which really abandoned the individual. So that’s the second part of the book. And I think I emphasize that a lot because I think it’s not often a conversation that folks thinking about the work and student affairs think about. The final question of the book. The final third looks at differences by identity groups. So what does it look like to be an ideal worker and how are you impacted by ideal worker norms? If you’re somebody of color, if you’re LGBTQ, if you are from the working class or poor we have a chapter on new professionals and graduate students, and then we have a couple of different chapters on parents, one for mothers and fathers. So that’s probably a little longer overview than you wanted, but that’s basically the three parts of the text. And what they all do together to really examine this on a multilevel basis.

Keith Edwards:
Right. Well, you mentioned in the book that most of this was written pre COVID but then you were kind of concluding and, you know, polishing things up and got to mention it as you were sending it off. But this notion of a lot of what you’re describing were feeling so poignantly, I mean, I’m hearing from people about RAs unionizing and refusing to show up for shifts because they don’t feel safe. They don’t think it’s fair. RRD’s leaving the position because it’s just too overwhelming. They can’t do it anymore. A lot of mid-level and senior level folks who are just completely burnt out and fried and have been for months. So these things were patterns before COVID, but I think COVID is really making it just so, so visible. But the difference is many of us are not seeing each other in the hallway, right?

Keith Edwards:
We’re not seeing each other slouched over dragging. We’re seeing each other on zoom meetings. Margaret shared a lot about the challenges and atrition. But and as we’ve already, I mean, we often think about live-on staff folks who are on call and on duty, who live-in residence halls, housing professionals, and they certainly are facing a lot of what we’re talking about, but we also want to expand beyond that. So Ben, maybe you can help us think beyond that, the housing folks and the challenges that you see playing out, you wrote about Greek life, student activities, campus recreation. How are these showing up similarly or different for some of these?

Ben Stubbs:
Sure. Thanks, Keith. I think it’s really important. You just mentioned, there’s essentially two stories here. There’s the experience of campus life professionals, those in the positions you just mentioned pre pandemic and potentially post pandemic, and then there’s their experiences sort of in the last year during the pandemic, I’ll try to address both. When speaking with campus life professionals in those areas, you’re going to hear about nights and weekends. You’re going to hear about long and irregular hours. And for most of us that’s written into our job descriptions, right? And we kind of accept that as part of the work because that’s when students can play, that’s when they can meet that’s when they can attend leadership workshops and community service events. And so it’s reasonable that our work includes those hours in those times, what our colleagues in other functional areas may not be as aware of is the amount of crisis response work that Greek life and recreation staff members in particular engage with some Greek life units.

Ben Stubbs:
Margaret, you mentioned in reviewing the chapter, this, this was news to you that some Greek life units have on-call rotations like housing or Dean of students offices do. And those that don’t have a rotation. That just means everyone’s on call all the time. I think recreation staff members have to deal with injuries. They have to deal with outdoor adventure trips that are all over the country, doing various things. They have to deal with student led sport club travel. I used to oversee a sport club program and every weekend there’d be 10 groups of student led trips, driving 12 passenger vans through weather and mountains and everywhere else. And that creates a lot of extra work. The major issue is not necessarily that that occurs, but when I talked to folks, the problem seemed to be that they were expected to do that work in addition to their standard nine to five hours and to their standard functions.

Ben Stubbs:
It’s almost like that work has emerged in recent years in ways that it didn’t use to exist. And it was just sort of added on. It’s never really been built into the schedule. The other thing that really stood out to me in my conversations and that aligned with my own personal experiences was the ways that campus life professionals are both valued for, and also also marginalized by their reputation for being competent, all purpose team members who are accustomed to manual labor, to be honest, and who have an ear to the ground and good relationships with students also partly due to outdated ideas about our work. Many campus colleagues see us as fun and energetic. And so if you want your event to be fun and energetic, you need some students, student life folks there, none of these things are bad, right? These sound like compliments and positive traits, but it created a lot of tension for campus life professionals because of this reputation, right?

Ben Stubbs:
The same people end up serving on special event committees. They ended up you know, involved with and asked to help contribute to efforts to respond to campus crises. They’re expected to set up and break down complex events and asked to help out with last minute projects, more often than team members and other roles. Right? One of my participants said, you know, they’re not going to ask somebody in the health center, right. And there are, I’m generalizing a bit here, right? I’ve cleaned up after events, alongside faculty members and budget managers and counselors and every other position, but the expectations and the pressure I think is often different for student life folks and this extra work, right? These extra committees events, support, crisis response. It’s very disruptive to the core work and to the things that you’re being evaluated on and expect it to produce nonetheless.

Ben Stubbs:
And the result is that professionals are foregoing personal and family commitments. They’re spending less time on activities that support wellbeing. You know, we also talked about the effects of the pandemic and in my experience the late nights and the weekends and the special events support for some people it’s really just been replaced with other similar extra work. In the past years, we’ve taken on new roles, whether it’s distributing face coverings, right for the entire campus community planning for different versions of the same event based on whether it’s going to be allowed or not. And I really want to make sure I mentioned advising students during the social unrest and political climate that we’ve had over the last several years. That’s a lot of challenging and emotionally draining work that campus life professionals are often doing that they have to do again, in addition to still planning the event and getting recruitment done and in getting intramural events done safely and correctly. So it’s really challenging. And most campus life staff members basically feel that they just have to make it work and adapt to any and all expectations that both the institution and that you mentioned earlier, that the students throw at them.

Keith Edwards:
Well, I’m getting, I’m feeling overwhelmed then. I feel like what you’re describing is this game of Jenga, right? Where we just put pieces on top and put pieces on top and put pieces on top. One of the things I often say is the student affairs professionals are great and the profession is great at being entrepreneurial, coming up with new ideas, terrible being editorial, like what are we going to take away? And if you are expected to have office hours or be on campus while the campus is open from say 8:30 to 4:30, but then you got to come in for the 7:30 meeting. Cause we’re all booked from 8:30 to 4:30. So you got to come in for the seven 30 meeting for the search committee. Cause it’s really important. And you got to come in at lunch and meet over lunch because our schedules, the book, we don’t have any other time.

Keith Edwards:
And then your staff meeting is at nine o’clock because that’s when the students are available. And then the 2:00 AM call and all of this, I love your sentence about we added these things on. We didn’t build them in. Right. And some of what we’re talking about that happened in the off hours is life or death, really critical work, but how do we build it in? And I think that’s one of the opportunities of all the shifts we’re seeing around COVID right. Working, virtually engaging students, virtually so many things were shifting. And I really hope that we’re able to think about things in a different way, which brings us to you, Rosie. We all, we all learn this. I mean, I learned this ideal worker thing in graduate school. I had learned it as a master student that, you know, if, if you’re dedicated, you’ll work 60 hours a week as a grad student plus classes. And that’s how you’ll get a good job when you leave here and be employed. And if you don’t do that, then maybe this isn’t right for how has the, the socialization that happens in, in grad school contributing to this and how can it help address some of it?

Rosie Perez:
Right. So, you know, I know not everybody goes to grad school first, but increasingly in our field, people are moving straight to graduate school from their undergraduate. Not like when I went to grad school 20 years ago, plus, and like most people had worked and I hadn’t that pathways a little bit different. Right? So that’s an important thing to acknowledge that, you know, the reality is grad school is designed to teach people like the norms of your field. What are the good practices? How do we do this in our field broadly speaking? And you know, the reality is in many programs, both intentionally and unintentionally, we send messages that, you have to overwork yourself, right? Even contradictory. We’re like, don’t do all the things, but we reward students with the rewards opportunities if they’re willing to do more. So it’s really confusing, right?

Rosie Perez:
And ultimately like people just get the message. If I want to get a job, I’m going to do more. And I’ve realized increasingly in prep programs, students get, so they flame out in two years or a year and a half, and they’re going into full-time work tired. Like we’ve fatigued them before they begin full-time practice because some of them are working from a place of fear. If I don’t do all of the things now I won’t get a job. I’m looking at what my peers are doing. They’re all doing too much. They can’t editorialize Keith, like you, he said but we’ve kind of built this system where everything is more and it’s, it’s like completely unsustainable if the title of the book. Right. But we’ve learned it really early. And I, I re I really worry about this. Like all the time that we are preparing people before they’ve even engaged in full-time practice for many folks, they’re coming tired.

Rosie Perez:
So what is the likelihood they’re going to stay if they’re burnt in two years. Right. Which I know part of this is related to the discussions we have or don’t have honestly about professionalism and how it’s coded. So a lot of my chapter gets into the idea about professionalism and its relation to the ideal worker. Professionalism often coded in ways that mean overworking giving all that you can at the cost of yourself, but professionalism also coded in ways that center, people who are white,male middle-class heterosexual, you know, don’t have children. And so this idea of learning to be a good professional in grad school has a cost to an individual, but it also upholds all the systems of oppression. We say, we want to burn down.

Keith Edwards:
Right. Well, and you’re reminding me because I think what we do for people who don’t fit that model is they have to do all those things. Plus all the other jobs, which is very similar, right?

Rosie Perez:
Yes. And then we also use this thing that I can be helpful for folks, but also really harmful, right? The field is so small, right? We use it as a way to get people to network, right? The field is small. You’ll meet lots of people. The field is small. Don’t screw up, comply, do more. These, these things we tell people about the field really again, like emphasize sometimes unintentionally, sometimes intentionally ideal worker norms. And that, that compliance, that focus on being a good professional when left unexamined from a critical lens, right. Moves us really far away from what we say we want, we want holistic development. We want people to stay in the field for a long time. We want to, you know, advance social justice and inclusion. So when I think about the work of graduate prep programs, right? Like a lot of it for me is that token stop talking and coded language, you know, like we have to make what’s tacit more explicit and just talk about it because it gives people an opportunity to at least articulate where they’re struggling, what they don’t understand, the tensions that they’re feeling, because what I’ve realized is lots of folks feel this tension of the ideal worker don’t have language for it.

Rosie Perez:
And because no one else is talking about it, they think they’re not doing it right. If they’re supposed to be doing 60 hours of work and 40, like, they just haven’t figured something out. I’m like, no, it’s designed to do that. Right. So, you know, I really have thought a lot about how do we just talk more and then think about if we don’t want it to be this way, what would we actually do when we move into positions where we have power and authority. Right? And so I incorporate these discussions really explicitly in my courses. And they think students are always like, Oh, what is professionalism? And nobody can come up with one definition. And the fact that we can’t right, but we all talk about it is a big thing.

Keith Edwards:
You reminded me of tenure, right? The whole idea of tenure that the, the unspoken our faculty members just got twitchy. All right. But the whole idea of tenure, non explicit tenure is if we make you do this for five years, then once we give you tenure, you’ll keep doing it anyway. Right. And we see so much of this and Rosie you’re mentioning student affairs, pros who get socialized into this 40, 60 hours a week when their assistantship is 15 or 20 hours. Then when I get a job that’s supposed to be 40, well then 60 to 80. And some of them get burnt out and leave. Some of them get burnt out and stay. Right.

Rosie Perez:
They’re not good. More, they’re not, they don’t want to be in the work, it’s their job, but they don’t really want to do this.

Keith Edwards:
How many of are, because we’re burnt out or not good at our jobs and not fun, not going to be around. Right. We become troubling. We become toxic. We take out our hurts on our colleagues and our students or our supervisees. I’m just really reminded of what I was in grad school. Feeling like my 20 hour assistantship should be 40, 60 hours a week. That’s just the reality. I was thinking like, this is what doctors do in medical school. Right. They just sell out. This is just the deal. That was my mentality. And I went to a regional conference where three leaders of student unions at the Epic of their career, sat there and talked about how the job had overwhelmed them. And one had multiple suicide attempts because of their burnout and trauma one had lost a marriage because his wife felt like he loved his union more than he loved his partner. And another one had just troubling relationship with his children. And I will walk out of that going, no, I’m not treating this like medical school. I’m not selling out. And that probably lasted like three days. And then I got back into it. Right. And then I would start my new job and I would make a recommitment. And that would last maybe a week. And then, but that’s what socialization is. It never stops. Right. It’s constantly coming.

Rosie Perez:
Yeah. Right. So I think there’s a faculty person, right. When I have students constantly telling me they’re tired and that they’re overworking. Right. I always think, instead of saying, well, what could you do to set boundaries? Which is part of it in my head, I’m like, well, what conversation do we need to have with assistantship providers about what’s reasonable? Like, how do we, how are we supporting students? Like that is one of the things that I find really difficult, right? Faculty do their thing and assistantship practicum providers, you do yours. In some programs, they are more tightly coupled, but sometimes we don’t really talk enough about the loads we’re putting on students. And we could work in better partnership to talk about how we could better do this and not amplify ideal worker norms. You know, I also think as faculty and people who supervise grad students, it would probably be helpful if we would more be more public or own where we’re struggling with this right.

Speaker 3:
Like, I think my students have responded. They find it fascinating that I have a good daughter. Right. And they love when real life interupts, even though sometimes I’m mortified, right? Like, Oh, no. But for them, that’s like a very humanizing thing. It’s not like when you get your master’s or PhD or get a particular job, you’re going to get it better that this our field is designed to, we built a field in a way that sustains this struggle and we’re not in it alone, but we’ve designed it. So we don’t always talk about it until it’s like to the point where breaking. Right. So I would just argue that, like, as we look ahead, what would it take for us to really be more open and transparent so that we can think about actually changing things rather than just saying it’s so hard.

Keith Edwards:
Well, open with the struggles we’re facing, right. How hard it is, how we’re tired, but also open with our strategies. Like I got to exercise and I do these things and I’ve had this conversation and I passed on this opportunity. Margaret, we started with you let’s circle back to you. What are you hearing from Ben and from Rosie? What, what sort of, what’s the important things that you want to make sure don’t get missed in this conversation?

Margaret Sallee:
There’s so many things. I mean, I think Rosie’s point right about the individual strategies are important, but it’s the organizational change and systemic change that we need. I mean, clearly while we’re all waiting for that change or while we’re waiting to be a part of that change and participate in that change, there are things that I think folks can and should do. And it has varying levels of impacts, right? Depending on your location in the organization. Right. You know, I’ve been having lots of conversations with folks about the like delayed send on your email. So, you know, and that really interesting to me, it seems like a no-brainer in terms of, if I have something I want to get off my desk, I will. And because of my work hours, right. I’m a single mom by choice of three year old twins. And so my workdays are shifted in weird ways.

Margaret Sallee:
Thank you. Thank you. They were two year-olds during the lockdown. So but so my work hours are shifted in ways that other peoples aren’t, but so I will do a lot of work at night, but I don’t want to send Ben an email at 10:00 PM at night and have it stress him out. Right. He works in student activities. So maybe he’s used to that, but so I will use the delayed send feature. So somebody gets it the next morning. And to me, this is just a simple thing and there it’s layered, right? It’s still, I’m still working, but other folks aren’t feeling compelled to respond. So in any case, individual strategies to sort of manage our own work, I think, as you said, building in time for exercise and, but it’s really a systemic issue, but I think it needs to be addressed at the top of all associations. And I’m seeing movement, right. NASPA is really interested in taking this up right now. And ACUHO-I is really interested to, and sort of considering what the role of the live on professional.

Keith Edwards:
It’s like on cue, those twins just decided, Hey, we heard you talking about us and here they’re chatting and for the background.

Margaret Sallee:
Well, they did. They just came back from a walk. So yeah.

Keith Edwards:
Just one perfect scripting and timing. I love it!

Margaret Sallee:
That’s our family for you.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah! Ben, what do you think that folks who want to make some of these shifts? I think the conversation often is about what the individual can do, but how do we talk about I’m your supervisor, What is it that you’re doing? What is it that I can do? How can I advocate for you? How can we work on this together? How can we shift these, how we work to change the, the structures? I think we get easily to talking about systems and structures as though they’re elsewhere, but you know, there, the administration is us. So how can we shift some of these? How can we make some different changes? What would you suggest Ben?

Ben Stubbs:
Yeah. That, as Rosie mentioned, this is sort of built into our field and in so many tiny ways, the good news is I think that there are very few supervisors and senior officials who actively seek out to leverage ideal worker norms, to squeeze every drop of work they can out of their employees with, with no concern for the, for the well-being or the, whether or not the work is gratifying for them. And I think it’s really important as we’ve talked about to point it out, to address the issue, to talk about it so that we can work on it. And just like any challenging thing, it’s not going to be easy, but as long as we’re striving towards improvement, there’s really, there’s some low hanging fruit. And then there’s some, some more challenging things. For instance, in our work most, most campus life folks just take it as a, they resigned themselves to this norm that we will attend and advise students during meetings whenever they decide to set them that if the students can only meet at nine, well, the meeting’s at nine. And I think in many cases there’s real opportunity, especially if supported by a department head or an AVP or up, there’s really opportunity to figure out how to balance meeting the needs of the students in terms of their schedules, but also recognizing that the professional staff member has obligations as well. And it’s going to be better at their job and more gratified by their job if we can not have them attending 10:00 PM meetings in addition to special events or weekend programs and things of that nature and

Keith Edwards:
The 7:00 AM breakfast meeting for the search committee.

Ben Stubbs:
Right. And a lot of folks I talked to would mention those meetings. And when I asked them, if they had tried to change that, most of them were kind of like, you know, does not compute, right. It wasn’t something that they had had even really considered for the most part. They just knew they didn’t like it. But, you know, I did talk to one department head in student activities who was able to transition, I think 20 evening meetings, 20 regularly occurring evening meetings all to business hours and not in ways that disadvantaged the students. And so I think as long as we reframe this as not being an example of not meeting the needs of our students or not supporting our students, but we reframe it as a different way of supporting our students so that we can better advise and better work. I don’t know about you, but I work better at 3:00 PM than I do at 9:00 PM.

Ben Stubbs:
And I think we can do those things. Most entry level and mid managers can probably do a better job of asking clarification and saying, where does this fall on my priority list? Or when is my deadline here? I think a lot of us just sort of say, yes, I’m on it. And when our supervisors are the people assigning, the tasks would probably be happy to help us navigate it and place it properly in terms of our other priorities. And I think that as we mentioned earlier, just thinking about the things that we’re modeling and thinking about the things that were rewarding and recognizing making sure that we’re not just giving divisional recognitions to the individuals who seem to have all the time on their hands or to make time on their hands, by, you know, sacrificing other things they might be doing. Those are all little things that we can do that. I think that with a concerted effort could really make a big difference.

Keith Edwards:
Rosie, your with graduate students all the time. And you wrote this chapter on the grad school socialization. I’d like you to speak a little bit to the people, supervising those graduate students and structuring their practicum and their work experience and those who are oftentimes at the same time supervising and managing and leading new professionals, what kind of things do you think we could suggest to those folks? So they could be in to create some of the change. Lots of this is systemic and profession wide and institutionalized, but some of it, we do have some agency. How can we push into that? A little bit.

Rosie Perez:
Part of it is really getting real with ourselves about how much work can actually be accomplished in the amount of time you have folks and that is for grad students and full-time staff, right? If you have graduate students for 20 hours, but you have them in five to seven hours of meetings, they aren’t going to be able to redesign a whole training for the fall within the few other hours. Right. So I think there is these questions of prioritization that then adds really hold. I think graduate students don’t know what they should ask, right? So I think there is a need for us to really ask them what they want to learn and what, what they might be able to learn in a particular position than sometimes they can’t. Right. Sometimes when I talked about the fear that people have about needing to know everything like right now, or else they won’t be competitive.

Rosie Perez:
I do think there is we can lovingly supervise folks by saying, maybe you don’t need to do that right now, you know, or ask them why, like I’ve asked so many students, why do you want to do that opportunity? And when they can’t tell me, I’m like, really what w why do you want to do that? You have all these things you’re telling me you’re stressed out and supervisors sometimes do the same things. And sometimes don’t right. Sometimes it’s because they are just worried they’re gonna fall behind or they think they’re supposed to. So I think we could ask more questions. I also think we could just talk through like our own strategies and limitations. I think some of the power that we have as supervisors is to help make rules that are unspoken explicit to help people understand how work is structured or not like what you don’t have control over.

Rosie Perez:
I think it’s hard sometimes when folks who are in early career positions or mid-level positions quite literally don’t have control of time either. Right. But to a grad student, they don’t know that they just know a task needs to happen. And then they’re asking someone else for assistance. But if we don’t talk about it, it’s kind of this flow of no, one’s really responsible. Everything is on fire. Everything has to be done right now. I increasingly wonder this, everything on the same time horizon, it kind of to Ben’s point, we had a conversation yesterday about how this pandemic has just really worked people’s sense of time and that everything’s immediate. Every meeting is instantaneous. All you need to do is click the link. There’s no breaks. People don’t eat or use the bathroom. They just, they don’t build in breaks anymore because all you gotta do is click.

Rosie Perez:
You don’t have to walk across campus for some folks. Right. And kind of reframing, how do you want to use your time? Not that it always has to be full which I will be honest. I’m still trying to learn, like if I see a block on the calendar, I’m like, Oh, what could I be doing? But what would happen if we left more blank space to actually be more purposeful and be more purposeful in what we want to do and figure it out, right? Like that is, I know that’s like really dreamy, but these are the things that I wrestle with. And I’ve been kind of working with people to think more creatively about.

Keith Edwards:
You’re having me think about three things and not just you, but, but all of this, what’s our purpose. And what’s our why. And, how does this fit priorities and not some things are life and death and, and we got to hit that, right. That’s really, but we, as student affairs professionals, we treat a lot of things that are not life and death as though they were life and death, right. That the advising meeting for the event six months from now, maybe we could flex that a little bit. Right, and then also the thing that is just resonating with me is this, is this both Ann, right? How do we navigate the systems and the individual, the supervisor, the supervisee, how do we, how do we bring all of this into the solutions? What is important? How do we be student center, but also recognize that we have human needs as well.

Keith Edwards:
Without I think the worrisome about both and as we just, and, and, and, and, and, and, but that’s where we have to set priorities. Well, unfortunately we are, we are running out of time as always. So I want to get one last question in from each of you rather quickly here, this podcast was called Student Affairs Now, what are you thinking troubling or pondering now? And I think we’ll go with Ben Rosie, and then Margaret. So Ben, what are, what’s really on you? And by now, I mean, like lately in your career this week, maybe at the end of us recording this podcast, what’s really on your mind now.

Ben Stubbs:
We’ve been working so hard to adjust to the famed new normal, and to rethink our work and identify new opportunities to advance our mission and serve our students. Right. I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means, me and my team members and my colleagues when we eventually transitioned back to our more traditional work that may not be very soon. And it may be a pretty slow slope towards that. But at some point students are gonna value they value, and they’re gonna expect some of those traditional activities and experiences and modes of operating. And I’ve been thinking a lot about how the changes we’ve made in the last year or so are going to impact our ability to, to support those opportunities and to provide those and engage students in those ways.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah. A lot of things have shifted. That’ll be hard to unshift. So Rosie, how about you, what’s on your mind now?

Rosie Perez:
What isn’t Keith. I tell you all the time, right? I think I’m always wondering what would happen if I, and those I worked with didn’t work from a place of fear that if I don’t do something, X is going to happen. And often the X is actually not a real consequence or even a real thing, but what would happen if I slowed down? Because it’s really hard to ask you, it’s, it’s actually kind of terrifying for me to say, like, I should slow down and legitimately do it consistently. Not like for a day of rest. Right. And those are the things that I’m thinking about. Like, if we want to be, if I want to be in this work and in higher ed, not in term, what are the shifts that I need to make and how do I want to make them with others, not just by myself so that we can change things.

Keith Edwards:
I really appreciate you coming back to that. You said that at the very beginning, and it just landed with me about how much we do out of fear. And so I really appreciate you coming back to this Margaret, how what’s on your mind now?

Margaret Sallee:
Yeah. I think it’s getting back to what, what Ben was saying too, about what things are going to look like whenever this all ends or what are kind of pulling it ends. Right. So I think, and speaking from a place of fear, I think that there is fear among administrators that we need to go back to the way things work. Right. But we have seen some positive changes a bit as much as we’re looking for silver linings, there are absolute silver linings for folks who are able to work from home and balance some other life needs. I do not want to pretend for one second that those who are homeschooling their children while they are working or having an easy time of it. But I think, I think there’s an easier, I think that there are ways that we can rethink what student affairs work looks like so that we professionals that if somebody would thrive by working at home two days a week, clearly we can still deliver services to students. So I think we just need to be a lot more creative in how we’re redesigning work

Keith Edwards:
Well. And you’re bringing us back to the both and I mean, we’re one of the themes of this podcast in our most recent episodes has been over and over normal. Wasn’t that great? Why would we go back to that? I, you wrote this book, this wasn’t about a COVID. This was about before that, and now we’re bringing in that perspective, but we had an enrollment cliff coming. People were burned out, adjunctification costs, rising, debts, retention. I mean, the normal wasn’t really working. So how do we give ourselves permission to rethink? So thanks to all of you for your great contributions for being great guests, for your perspectives, your ideas, and your stories of your real life. I really appreciate it. Thanks to helping all of us rethink student affairs work. It’s a real opportunity and really important to our listeners.

Keith Edwards:
You can receive reminders about this and other episodes by subscribing to the Student Affairs Now, newsletter or browse our archives at studentaffairsnow.com thanks to our sponsors today, LeaderShape and Stylus publishing, which published this book, and you can get it for 30% off and free shipping using our discount code SANow please subscribe to the podcast, invite others to subscribe, share on social or leave a five star review. It really does help get conversations like this to more people and build a learning community so we can continue to make this professional development and these conversations for, to you. Again, I’m Keith Edwards. Thanks again to the fabulous guests today and everyone who is listening and watching make it a great week. Thanks all!