In Medias Res #10- You just keep on pushing over the borderline

I’ve found blogging this year to be much harder than last. When I was writing about the job search process it was easy for two reasons: 1) it gave me a clear simple topic to focus on, 2) I was focusing on the job search all the #*&%ing time. This year has been more challenging in large part because I don’t think about work nearly as much as I thought about getting a job. Now that I have one, and I’m relatively comfortable and happy with it I tend not to think about it so much. Certainly there are days when I’m pissed or frustrated and for most of the ride home I’m cursing people in my head. Generally by the time I’m walking up my stairs, though, I’m reading a bill or perusing the cover of a magazine and work is miles away.
So when I sit down to write these entries on Thursday mornings I’m usually at a loss. I had lunch with a couple of student leaders on Monday as a thank you for a mini-conference they helped me put together. Somehow we got on the topic of my social life, and I started to think about how much I’ve written about that here. Right now, for whatever reason (maybe because I live alone?) I think about that quite a bit more than work. One of the students wants to set me up, the notion of which makes me particularly uncomfortable.
Which brings me to this week’s topic: boundaries.
I know that everyone has to make these decisions on their own. A good friend and someone I generally respect has a really interesting system for determining where his boundaries are. Some students he basically shuts out. There were a group of students who through a combination of hubris and youthful exuberance more or less made his life miserable last year. These students? I don’t think he even acknowledges them in public. However, there are other students- students he’s supervised, students he advises- that he seemingly adopts. They travel with him (and not just on university business). They spend weekends at his apartment. And that works for him. No judgments. (I’m sure no matter how I describe it its going to sound judgmental to people).
I remember early on in grad school our professors asked us to do a crossing the line activity. We stood up along the wall in a classroom and the east was agree, west was disagree. Our professor proposed a version of the following scenario (this is obviously not verbatim): “You are an entry level hall director. Should you be allowed to date an undergraduate student who does not live on campus?” I agreed in large part because I don’t like the idea of my superiors attempting to legislate my behavior. More importantly, I figured if I was dating a student they must be one pretty damn exceptional student. Most of my classmates disagreed. They assumed that it would present a whole myriad of complications. What if one of their friends lives in their building? What if you have to reprimand one of their friends? What if they’re partying in your building!
I brushed off most of these examples. So what if their friends live in my building? I’m not going to show preferential treatment. Hopefully anyone I’m dating would have enough respect for me not to do something as stupid as party in my building. If they are? Well that relationship won’t last very long.
That said I tend to draw my boundaries pretty clearly with students. I like spending time with my students. They are funny, bright, and creative. But they are generally 19 and 20, and I can think of very few cases where I want to spend inordinate amounts of time with a teenager. At the end of the day all of that developmental stuff we’re trying to help them through? Well ‘that stuff’ is what I look for in friends.
I know my students would prefer if I was a little bit looser with the boundaries. They share inordinate amounts of gossip with me in the hopes I will reciprocate. They tell me about their love lives and their drama. Helping them through this stuff is part of my job. Using experiences from my life to illustrate a point, I think, are completely with the bounds of propriety. Still, I’m not updating my Facebook relationship status.
More than anything this is probably the aspect of my job I struggle with the most. Probably because of all the ambiguity involved, right Baxter Magolda? Grad school prepared me to manage a budget, run programs, evaluate and assess my work and the work of others. I have a good grasp of student development theory, and I'm surprised how much of this stuff is just sitting in my brain when I go in for a stragetic planning meeting or a brainstorming session.
Its the messy human relationships that I was completley unprepared for. I think in someways my assistantship made me even less prepared for the transition because as a grad student I could get away with so much more.
Its probably time to join a book club.