In medias res #24-Spring Break 2K8

That's right I'm kicking your ass hall director in the city. All over town. Ninja stylee. RESPECT.



I dated a guy freshman year of college who loved to ironically drop the phrase “Spring Break 2K2” into conversations leading up to the aforementioned event. This ex was a city kid and we attended a pretty urban non-traditional campus. Most of us-if we went on spring break- did service trips, and the rest just hung out in the city. My bf at the time though, was determined to have a good old fashioned spring break in the most ironic way possible. He and two friends drove down to a beach town, stayed in a ratty motel, and went to lots of bars with the words senor, froggy’s, slackers, and boomers in the name. They came back with sun kissed skin and overexposed photos. I had gone to build houses for Habitat for Humanity and didn’t feel particularly jealous. In fact I’m almost completely certain that I had more fun.
In grad school I usually worked through spring break. I lived too far away to go home, and especially last year I had too much on my plate to take that much time off. I did spent part of my spring break last year on a job interview, and managed to tack on a few days afterwards to visit some college friends. This year as spring break approached the only things I looked forward to would be getting out of here at five o’clock and the chance to catch up on some gestating projects. Over the weekend, though, a friend (and colleague) suggested that we recreate spring break on our own. Obviously we would have to go to work everyday, but in the evenings our students would be gone. The bars, restaurants, and fairgrounds of our fair burg would be ours! OURS!
So Monday night we went out. Tuesday night? Out. Wednesday? On the town! Tonight I’m going to a documentary screening so I don’t know if that counts, but tomorrow there is a raucous party on the docket. The only lowlight so far has been running into the whole remaining RA staff on Tuesday night at our local watering hole. I think our students took too much delight in seeing us outside of a campus setting and partaking of beverages no less! Other than that the main thing I’ve learned from this weekend is I will be happy to never go on spring break again. I love sleep and structure too much.
We’ve been talking a lot this week about wrapping the year up. It seems amazing to me that I’ve been here almost a year. I feel as if I’ve done nothing, and yet if I compare where my office was to August I’ve made some considerable progress. As I begin to plan for next year I’m admittedly having difficulty deciding on priorities. I feel as if I (and my supervisor) set the bar a little too low. There’s lots of personal goals I want to work on-specifically my level of professionalism- but in terms of the outcomes I identify I don’t want to set myself up to fail. Do people have this problem? I think a lot of it has to do with the vagueness of my position and the gray areas in which my office exists. I don’t want to set myself up to fail, but I definitely need to set the bar higher. If I don’t how am I growing as a professional?