A Small Field – Journal Excerpt

So for my internship course, I have to write bi-weekly journal entries. As I was going through them this morning to prepare to submit them, I decided to share this small excerpt from way back in January.

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It is interesting to think about transitions at universities. This is something I thought about a lot at ACPA last year. Institutions of higher education are an interesting little section of the world where people are constantly coming and going. Students, faculty and staff members. One individual can connect potentially dozens of institutions at some point in their career, just from their own experiences – not even including the network and connections they have. For example of how network can spread, when I was in the ACUHO-I STARS program summer before my senior year of college I met a number of other undergrads interested in Student Affairs. We met up at ACPA and people brought friends from their grad programs. I was able to connect with a few and talk to them pretty regularly. As they go through their search process they will be at a new university in a few months and my network will expand to that institution, as I will undoubtedly meet their new friends at a conference at some point. We are all examples of our institutions and hold our experiences as a representation of what those institutions can produce. Institutions of higher education are not just teaching students – they are teaching faculty and staff how to be better people, how to connect with constantly changing generations of students. I think if we remain frozen in our ways and locations of practice we will eventually become stagnant.

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What are your thoughts?