The 2007 Student Affairs Job Hunt

In Medias Res # 26- All's Well

My apartment is three quarters packed. There is something really depressing about living in a place with nothing on the walls, no books in the bookcase, no lamp on the night table. I am excited to move though, and I am ready to get out of Dodge as it were.

Today in an attempt to procrastinate I have been reading my old postings, and doing that most sacred of student affairs activities: reflecting. I keep getting asked if I am worried or nervous about moving to a new city. “Are you stressed?” My supervisor inquired last night at dinner.

Surprisingly I’m not. Looking back it is interesting to see how much enthusiasm I mustered for the wrong kind of job. To a certain extant back in January I was mostly romanticizing the notion of being done. I also had wildly unrealistic expectations about what moving to some of these campuses would be like. Somehow I managed to convince myself that working in a Residence Life department two hours away from a major city would provide me with plenty of opportunities to visit said city.

On the whole I am surprised how very often in my posts I am simultaneously peeved and excited. Mostly I just remember being stressed and cranky. This was a very rough semester for me. My course work got neglected basically throughout March and April (I was always on planes. I never had time to do reading). My social life was non existent. The few times I was in town for more than an evening I just wanted to veg out and of course, work on my applications.

In retrospect I learned a couple of things from this search:

1. If it feels wrong, it is wrong. My gut was right 99% of the time in this process. I knew who was going to call me back. I knew who wasn’t really enthused about my candidacy and I knew who I didn’t want to work for.
2. That said, I ignored my gut too often. I was doing first round phone interviews for positions well into April. I had some scheduled that I had forgotten about even after I accepted a position. This level of desperation was completely unnecessary. I wasted my time and I wasted the interviewer’s.
3. I have a lot more stamina than I give myself credit for. Maybe it’s because grad school was this warm and supporting environment, but I more than met the marathon challenge encompassed in two weeks of back to back campus visits. Although I don’t plan on normally working myself that hard, it is nice to know going into my next position that I have untapped resources.
4. I can actually get what I want, and more than that I can get precisely what I want. When I first started graduate school one of our professors’s asked us to write a letter to ourselves about our ideal position. Where would we be? What would we be doing? Looking back at the research project that spun out of that letter, I am pleasantly surprised at how much the job I have matches the job I wanted. Not just in terms of position, but also location, campus environment, and yes even salary.

Since I’m in a list making mood, here are some recommendations for people who will be searching next year:

1. If you can afford it, go to a placement. Lots of members in my cohort opted not to attend the Joint Conference because the assumption was they would not find their job there. Yes, placements are rife with Res Life jobs, but I’ve since learned that’s proportional. There are lots of great positions at placement in all facets of the university, and you do yourself a disservice if you fail to put in the face time. My position would have been basically unattainable if I had not attended a placement.
2. Find one person to vent to. Just one. Everybody’s search is different, and everybody responds to the stress of the situation in a unique way. Find the one person whose temperament is most like your own and share with them. It will keep you and your stress in check, and everyone else will appreciate you more.
3. Start early. Especially if you are a procrastinator start putting your resume and a cover letter together over Thanksgiving break. Even in you are not going to placement you never know when a job will pop up and it makes it easier to apply if most of the work is already done.
4. Start saving money now. Most of it you will get back in taxes if you keep your receipts, but doing a national job search can be prohibitively costly.
5. Figure out the essentials and stick to them. I interviewed out of fear with institutions where I would have been miserable. Stick to the essentials, and you will have fewer regrets.
6. Be flexible. Just because you’ve never heard of a school or a town, doesn’t mean that it’s not a fabulous institution. Although I didn’t end up there, there were lots of institutions not on my radar who ended up near the top of my list after a bit of exploration.
7. Don’t settle. It would have been easy to jump on the first good fit that came along, but I had my heart set on a position. I stretched everyone’s patience a little bit, but in the end I got what I wanted.
8. Be the best possible version of yourself. And you know what I mean. I met too many people in this process who gave into their baser instincts at times, and when you are trying to evaluate a position or a campus the baser instincts get highlighted in neon. Everything seems that much more unpleasant.

I move next week, so who knows when I will have the internet again. Assuming this is my last post (and it may not be) I just wanted to thank everyone who took the time out to scan my musings. I know a lot of this was redundant, but hopefully you found at least some of it amusing, dear reader. Shout out to Hirstin Moh for keeping me on track with the postings. Best of luck to everyone who is about to start a new position or who is still looking for one.

posted by StudentAffairs.com @ 11:21 AM 0 comments

Pick Me-Choose Me-Hire Me #25- Responsibility Sucks

posted by StudentAffairs.com @ 4:31 PM 0 comments

In Medias Res # 25: The Upside of Unemployment

Ok, so there is an obvious monetary downside to how much time I will be without a paycheck (two months, in case you were keeping tallies). In that time I need to move (and pay movers), eat, set up an apartment (including utilities) and keep myself from going insane with boredom. That said, there are some really nice consequences of not having a job.

1. I can sleep as late as I want
2. I can stay up as late as I want
3. I am reading about a book a day. Sometimes more.
4. I have time to cook complex satisfying healthy meals. Yesterday I tried a salmon recipe that took four hours. But it came out amazing and was completely worth it (I’m also saving insane amounts of money by eating every meal at home).
5. I have time to catch up on all the stupid movies I’ve missed in the last two years. Seriously, before unemployment I didn’t even know who Amanda Bynes was!
6. I have read every issue of the New Yorker that was published this year.
7. My i-pod is always charged when I go for a run.
8. My laundry is clean, put away and folded nicely. I have no half unpacked luggage lying around.
9. My bed gets made every day.

Were it not for the lack of money I think I could really learn to love unemployment. Now admittedly I do find myself occasionally bored, and I have been jotting down work ideas in a notebook for the past few weeks, so I’m clearly restless and ready to start work. Next week I really have to get down to the nitty gritty of packing, and I’m sure the actual moving process will be stressful. But these last two weeks of blissful nothing have been pretty spectacular. I highly recommend it, if you can swing it.

posted by StudentAffairs.com @ 2:14 PM 0 comments

Pick Me-Choose Me-Hire Me #24- Summer

posted by StudentAffairs.com @ 9:37 AM 0 comments

In Medias Res #24: The 2007 Student Affairs Apartment Hunt

Well, that was a long weekend.

I tried to make things easy on myself by staying with a friend who lives just outside of my new town. I figured I would get some sleep and then drive in early the next morning to start my search. Which is exactly what I did. Except I failed to realize that I was traveling with the oncoming traffic into the city, and about five minutes from my exit the traffic stopped. As such, I started my day late.

But that was okay because the first few apartments on my schedule were keys with a code in a lockbox. That’s right dear reader, the property manager didn’t come to open the apartment for me. He just told me where to find keys so I could break in. Needless to say all of these apartments were underwhelming. One of them was a little bit bigger than some of the other units I looked at, but the neighborhood was a little uncomfortable and the apartment itself needed a lot of work.

So I moved on. I met my next appointment and the apartments he showed me looked like sets for a movie about intravenous drug users. And he was late. Call me anal retentive, but this is your job. I would never be late for a meeting, and if there were unavoidable circumstances I would at least let people know I was going to be late to the best of my ability. Whatever the case, I was not about to rent a crackhouse. You can get those for free.

At this point it was 9:15 and I had exhausted half of the internet leads I had set up. I decided to just start driving around and looking for rent signs. This proved fortuitous. First, I ran into a rental office right in between the two neighborhoods I wanted to live in. The realtor was really nice, showed me a lot of units, and the day was finally starting to look up. I could actually see myself living in one of these places.

I went to my next appointment and again the realtor was late. This time by more than an hour. You may be asking yourself why I waited so long? Well, I really wanted to see the apartment and I became enchanted with the neighborhood as I walked around waiting for her. When she finally showed up and let me see the unit, I walked in and out. The floor plan was horrible.

So I returned to driving. I called one sign and they told me to come to their office. Where I was greeted by a loud and emphatic, “How old are you?” This was announced dripping with condescension, and about five minutes later when the property manager explained to me she couldn’t even show me the apartment because I did not have three different prior landlords to refer me, I left.

And called another sign. This one I had much more luck with. They showed me three apartments, all in my price range with nice layouts and the amenities I wanted. The property manager was even pleasant and told me all about the neighborhood (and even a bit about its drawbacks).

I was basically ready to sign a lease but I had to go meet a college friend for lunch (even though it was already early afternoon). We had a great meal at this charming small Italian restaurant and she walked me over to her property manager’s office where they took me to see a couple more apartments. Even though these apartments were technically bigger the finishes were very 70s basement. Way too much wood paneling for one person.

After all of this I went back to realtor #4 and rented the apartment I had intended to. I spent the rest of the weekend hanging out with friends and suffering the long drive back to campus. I have moving funds from my new office so now I need to hire movers (it is, alas, a third floor walk up). In just a few weeks In Medias Res will be hitting the road again, and next time he’s not coming back!

posted by StudentAffairs.com @ 11:10 AM 0 comments

In Medias Res #23- I'd rather do this instead of packing

How is it that something you can enjoy in the abstract can become stressful and mundane in reality? In other words, when did apartment hunting start to suck?

I was excited about this before (as you could probably tell from the last few posts). A new apartment! A new neighborhood! Possibly even places to go out where students are nowhere to be found! Don’t get me wrong I love students, but I love them even more when they stay away from my favorite restaurants and coffee shop (which where I am now happens pretty rarely).

Apartment hunting really isn’t all that bad. I just thought it would be easier. I don’t know why I thought moving to a new city with a major real estate market would be easy. But I did. So tomorrow I start the trek back to my new campus to hunt for apartments. That in itself could serve as the premise for a blog.

Here’s some stuff I’ve noticed for you graduate students (or professionals) who may be planning a major move:

-I should have started saving for this when I started my job search. Granted, I figured there was a good chance I’d be living in (although it’s not as if that move would have been free either). It would have been the smart thing to do, though. For example, I won’t get my security deposit or utility deposits back before I move into the new place. Since I would like to have the electricity turned on I’m going to need to front that money. And pay off my credit cards for the job search. And subsist on no salary. My new employers are giving me moving funds, but it’s all through reimbursement.

-Oh yeah, I won’t be getting a salary between now and the end of July. So again, I probably should have saved some more. Right now I have enough cash on hand to get me through an apartment deposit, utility deposit, and buying some new stuff for the new apartment. I will be cutting it close, and to be completely honest I don’t know how much this new city is going to cost.

-Craigslist is not the be all end all. Although, you’d think so if you asked my friends where they found their apartment. Lots of websites, like rent.com and apartments.com only have listings for major complexes (and if that’s where you want to live, kudos). You’re best bet? Going to the website of the major newspaper and looking through the electronic classifieds. Apparently everybody still advertises in the newspaper (real estate professionals are so Web 1.0).

I’ll give you all an update on the apartment hunt (maybe even with pictures if I can get my act together) when I get back. Hopefully it will be relatively uneventful and I will return with a job, a masters degree and apartment (although 2 out of 3 aint bad).

posted by StudentAffairs.com @ 4:41 PM 0 comments

Pick Me-Choose Me-Hire Me #23- Dreams

posted by StudentAffairs.com @ 1:35 PM 0 comments