“Winning isn't everything, but the will to win is everything.”

This week quote is from Vince Lombardi, the famous American football coach of Green Bay Packers and the Washington Redskins. The Super Bowl trophy was renamed after him after his death from cancer in 1970, and he was inducted into the football hall of fame the following year. He is also well known for introducing the idea of zone blocking, the famous 'Lombardi Sweep' play, and for coaching the Packers during the Ice Bowl (otherwise known as the NFL Championship Game of 1967).

As a highly competitive individual, I love this quote. I never realized until recently how deep my competitive spirit runs, but it's pretty deep. When I tell my students that I will not accept anything less than the best and winning, I know that there's a good chance it won't come through to victory. The best part is giving them that desire and watching them try so hard to make it happen and to know that I played a small bit in that.





The past week has been a huge combination of good and bad, pride and sorrow, ups and downs.

My best friend came to visit me over the weekend. If I ever needed a dose of her friendship, now was the time. I laughed until I cried, ate so much sushi I thought I might explode, and got to go Walmarting with her – an event that I miss more than I’ll probably admit to most people.

Students in my building came together to create some great school spirit in an attempt to win a contest – and they did :) I cannot describe the feeling associated with finally seeing students unite together for a cause other than going out and drinking underage. What’s more, the win has boosted our budget and we can now do many more fun things!

Our football team has reached new levels of bad. I don’t even know if ‘bad’ even describes them at this point. It’s heartbreaking for the students – both the athletes and the fans – and it’s so hard to sell the idea that they should continue to go and support them when they know (or assume) that the team will probably lose in some catastrophic way. I'm starting to wonder if I should stage a coup and take over one of their practices in an attempt to give them the pep talk that I give my students :)

We had another write-up in my building this weekend, and it amazes me what students will get pissed about. Nevermind the fact that they broke policy and had alcohol in the building, the more important fact (to them, of course) is the fact that the RAs had “no reason” to knock on their door and follow up with them from their noise violation earlier in the evening. These students thought that 3am was a PERFECT time to try and talk with me about the situation. While they didn’t knock on my apartment door, they did stop me outside on the sidewalk as I was walking outside with my friend after my RA called me about the situation. And then (because of course, it gets better) they didn’t understand that I don’t actually work ALL THE TIME and were insistent on trying to find me the next day to talk more about it when it would be convenient for them. This in turn created the first time that I’ve actually had to get snippy back with students because of their attitudes towards me. And then they don’t understand why. I remain amazed by this entire ordeal.

The good thing about everything that’s going on right now is that every passing day puts me closer to more unstructured time in my office and the sweet release of Thanksgiving break. I will shop, play Rock Band/Guitar Hero, sleep in, and enjoy that I have no one else to be concerned about but myself. Then I’ll just have 3 more weeks to get through before I have a lovely 2 week break for the holidays.

I can see how people burn out on residence life. I’m not to that point yet, not at all, but I think next year I will do a better job of structuring my time and not waiting until October to finally leave campus and get away. Even next semester – while I know I will be busy with various things (including teaching!) – if I don’t find time to get away and escape I will probably lose my mind. I have already started thinking about spring break and what sorts of things would be fun to do. And then there’s May which means the end of my contract for the year, a fantastic vacation, and then possibly back to work for a month before I get a whole other month off and the chance to roam around the country visiting family and friends. Despite what the calendar tells me, it doesn’t seem that far away at all :)

"The quality of your life is the quality of your relationships."

This post's quote is from Anthony Robbins, a self-help writer and apparently famous for various seminars and the tactics he uses to sell his point. I'm not very familiar with it, and I won't even go as far to say that I buy into it at all, but I like the quote.

As I read through the other blogs on studentaffairs.com, I’m starting to see a trend. It’s apparently that time of year when nothing seems to go right and everyone is ready to absolutely scream. I can buy into this – last week I could not WAIT to pack up and get out. I had fun weekend plans and I wanted them to start immediately, without any of this work stuff getting in the way. I was a whirlwind as I packed, cleaned up my desk, tore through my to-do list, and hit the road. I had a fabulous weekend with some fabulous friends and I’ve returned energized and ready to charge through the next 5 weeks.

At least, that’s how I feel today. Yesterday was a mish-mash of feeling sorry for myself and being sad about other people. I teared up twice in my office during the day (email exchanges full of emotion and reminiscing of good times will do that) and then ended up crying later on in the evening while I was talking about everything that was going on. Thankfully my evening took a turn for the better, and so now I’m looking forward to seeing what might happen with a new situation……

Okay, so I’ll just put it out there. I might enter the new realm of trying to date while having a full-time job. Up until last week or so I didn’t think I was ready to handle it. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to balance my job with my personal life and learning how to make time for myself in a world where I’m always at work. It’s been a rough transition, much more difficult than I anticipated. I find myself with plans every weekend (you don’t understand how much I love having coworkers that are my age that share similar personalities to my own) and spending the evenings during the week trying to catch up on sleep and recharge for the next day. Now I’m starting to see that I’m a little bored with myself and maybe I’m ready to try sharing my time with another person. Maybe.

My dating record is full of mistakes and smudges across the page. I’ve made some good friends over the years (I’m proud to say that I still speak to almost everyone that I’ve ever dated) but haven’t ever found someone that could put up with me just as much as I could put up with them. But now things could change, and after a 10 month hiatus from being in a relationship, maybe I’m ready to give it a go. Maybe.

As for everything else, it’s shaping up to be a beautiful fall. The weather has finally turned cold – cold enough that the heat got turned on in my building yesterday – and I feel like fall weather is here to stay. The sun still shines brightly and the campus is looking more beautiful than I even imagined that it could. My job is still busy (although will slow down quite a bit in the coming weeks) and I still love what I do here. With each passing week I feel more and more comfortable with my position here, and now that I’m achieving career satisfaction it might just be time to get some personal satisfaction as well.

"Every leaf speaks bliss to me/ Fluttering from the autumn tree."

Today's quote is really two lines of poetry from Emily Bronte, the British novelist and poet from the 1800s and one of the famous Bronte Sisters - all of whom were successful writers and published under male pseudonyms at the time. Emily is remembered for Wuthering Heights. (For those interested, Charlotte wrote Jane Eyre and Ann wrote Agnes Grey) Both Charlotte and Ann published additional works - Charlotte published the most but all of the Bronte Sisters would die young before their talents could be fully developed. [Despite my background in literature, I haven't read any of these. This is probably a tragedy in and of itself.]




It's that lovely time of year when fall is really setting in - weather starts to cool off, leaves start changing colors, I start wearing socks again, and then my building goes absolutely nuts.

Maybe I should say that students in general start to go crazy. I'm sure that it isn't isolated to my building or even my quad of campus. My usually quiet building has suddenly gone topsy-turvy and things are happening all over the place. Roommate situations are moving from a slow simmer to a rolling boil, beer pong becomes an acceptable weekend activity (ha!), and people run around all crazy because they simply can. I stand in the midst of it all wondering what's going on and thinking that it must be time for fall break and that's why people have suspended all views of reality.

Other than all of that, there hasn't been much interesting stuff going on. Students are studying for midterms and I'm preparing to start my first round of meetings with those students whose academic attempts have come up a little short. We're preparing for homecoming festivities and Halloween and programming within the hall is starting to pick up a bit. My staff seems stressed out - from their own coursework and also because they are starting to realize that there are two very short months left of the semester and most of them still have a lot of programming left to do. I know that it's probably time to do a little staff development, but no one seems like they want to do anything fun together that isn't thrown together a mere 10 minutes prior. Or maybe they just don't want to do anything that involves me - either way, it's not giving me very much to work on.

It's a beautiful Sunday afternoon and I am choosing to spend it on my couch in front of the TV. One of the very best parts of being a professional is not having homework to do on the weekends and being able to be as lazy as I want to be :)

“Money is like a sixth sense - and you can't make use of the other five without it”

This quote is from W. Somerset Maugham, an English playwright, novelist, and short story writer who was most popular from about 1915-1940. This quote works with the theme of today's entry, but also the theme of the world today. Reading my daily USA Today has gotten a bit repetitive and bleak in the past days.




I wish I could sit and tell you about all the wonderful and interesting things that have happened since the last post, but not a lot has occurred. At least, not a lot that stands out in my mind. The days blend together in a blur of appointments and suddenly so do the weeks and then I've lost all track of time and I don't know what's going on at all. Welcome to the professional life.

I have a busy month ahead of me, with homecoming festivities and Halloween (always a big deal, no matter what campus you work on) and looking forward to Thanksgiving and winter break. One of the best parts will be getting my first official visitor, the same wonderful friend who helped me move here, who will be returning to hopefully experience a much more calm and relaxed version of myself.

In the meantime, I was reminded in the past week about the wonderful professional development allowance that I am given and all the fun things that I can do with it. I had forgotten that it existed and that I didn't need to worry about paying for some of the things that I'd like to do, since I have the money available to take care of it. So now I'm stuck trying to figure out what exactly I want to use it on.

Some of this is a given....I want to attend ACPA again so I'll be paying my membership fee and conference registration fee, and travel/hotel fees with the money....but if I get to be a part of recruitment at the conference (which I am DYING to do because of my own ACPA experience), then I've heard rumors that I don't have to use my development funds because the college will pay for everything. This means that suddenly there are other conferences that I could attend and books I could buy that I hadn't even thought of before! And being the nerd that I am, I'm already starting to look around and think about what exactly I'd love to see the money used for.

The best part about having this development money is that that means more of my personal money is available for more fun things, like travel! And clothes! :) One of the best parts of having a real paycheck and being an adult is having the ability to decide that I want to take random trips to random places for no real reason. Not only is it exciting to be a tourist and explore, but it's always fun to get out of town and leave the college kids behind. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE my residents....but I also love having conversations with people over the ages of 18-22 and getting out of the residence hall.