"Just the Way It Is" in Student Affairs - but Not the Way It Has to Be

After 18 years as a student affaks professional, I am now headed in a different direction. By this time next year I will be a first-year student in the master of divinity program at Boston University School of Theology. The personal lessons that I have learned about balance over the past two decades are very similar to others that appear in this issue, so I will not repeat them here. All the recommendations of the other authors are good ones, and I wish I had learned some of them sooner. Instead of focusing on personal lessons, I offer some structural observations, and - with respect, as I leave the profession - a challenge as well. Every personal story in this issue starts from the assumption that student affairs work simply requires more than most people can give and remain healthy. The hours are long and the work is frequently stressful. Of course, the work is also satisfying and rewarding in other ways, or no one would stick with it. That is "just the way it is" in student affairs, we believe, and any student affairs professional worthy of career advancement will give 110% to the cause. Make that 150% in August, October, and April. We all remember times when we just had to keep going until the work was done, and no matter that we were exhausted. The students deserved our best, and we gave it. The challenge, we assume, is to give ourselves permission to carve out a space within an overlong workweek for personal renewal. Even the summer months do not provide a respite for many of us. A friend of mine once described student affairs work during the fall and spring semesters as "driving down Highway 81 at night in a blinding rainstorm at 85 miles per hour with your headlights off." Summer is a little better, he said. It is like "driving down Highway 81 at night in a blinding rainstorm at 85 miles per hour with your headlights ON" (G. Kowalski, personal communication). While this is "the way it is" in student affairs, I do not believe that this is the way it has to be, at least most of the time, and putting the responsibility on graduate students and young professionals to balance this unbalanced equation is unethical in my view. It is the responsibility of senior administrators, I believe, to make the tough choices to bring balance into student affairs work. Student leaders and paraprofessionals are not likely to develop the skills necessary for a balanced life so long as we expect RAs to work 30-40 hours per week while successfully completing 15 credit hours of coursework. It is not likely that graduate students preparing to enter our profession will have any semblance of balance in their lives so long as we, as faculty members and GA supervisors, continue to structure study and work experiences that require 18 or more hours of work in a day. It is not likely that entry-level student activities professionals will learn to balance their personal and professional lives when we offer them no personal time, and when they spend all day, every day with people with whom they cannot ethically establish a personal relationship. It is not likely that mid level professionals will invest enough time in supportive and lasting home lives when we offer career advancement only to those who manage to complete Ph.D.s while also working more than 40 hours per week. This issue is easier to see, perhaps, when we consider another profession - medicine. Medical interns work terribly long hours for very low pay, and recent research suggests that patient care suffers because of this. The arguments that teaching hospitals advance to support the present system sound either like the psychology of hazing ("I had to do this when I was an intern, and now I get to make you do it, too") or like the economics of slavery ("We cannot afford to hire and supervise enough interns to make the hours shorter"). Each of these arguments is frequently covered by a broader assertion about education ("These new physicians should not complain about long hours; instead, they should be grateful to us because they are receiving an education that will prepare them well for their future practice of medicine"). …