Extra-! Extra-! Read all about it!

I'd like to begin this post with two simple truths. Both of these are things you know if you know me personally or have spoken with me for more than a second and a half:

1. I am a word nerd.
2. I am a band nerd.

It is these facts, and their intersection, that led me here. At one point in the not-so-distant past, I was thinking about athletic bands (read: in my natural state). Much of the experience that led me into the field of student affairs in the first place was being a member of and student leader within the pep band at my undergraduate institution. Thinking of that experience - one that involved both a credit-bearing course and a out-of-classroom leadership opportunity - I struggled to think of a term to describe this sort of experience. I toyed with my knowledge of prefixes and word roots and considered: Pericurricular? Paracurricular? I then realized: The perfect word is already out there, and it's in use: Cocurricular.

In student affairs, we like the word cocurricular. We should - it places us as equal partners at the table that is the higher education enterprise. Co- means with; that is, the curriculum with the cocurriculum comprise the college experience. We are the copilot to academics - both are necessary to land the plane successfully.

In contrast, say the word "extracurricular" in a student affairs crowd. The responses are likely to be similar to those from the word "dorm" (that's another post for another day). But why? We hear extra- (note the hyphen) and we think extra: Optional, unnecessary, might be a nice treat, but certainly not vital. But extracurricular is much less a value judgment and more simply a declarative statement: Extra- means outside of (or beyond, if you want to get on your high horse), and except in the instances where our work has a credit-bearing component, this modifier is accurate. We do indeed exist outside the curriculum. This isn't, and shouldn't be used as, a tool to downgrade what we do.

So which is right? As I've hopefully demonstrated, both are. I'll keep walking the walk and speaking the cocurricular language of our profession, but when it comes right down to it, you won't hurt my feelings one bit if you refer to the extremely important work I do as extracurricular.

One and Only One Ambition

(For supplemental reading, See What Else Is There? from 80 Minutes of Regulation)

Earlier this month, I made the trip up home to Delaware to celebrate the retirement and 36 year career of Paul Parets, director of bands at Alexis I. duPont High School and my former high school band director. At the gathering of several hundred at A.I.'s football stadium, the love from the more than three and a half decades of Tiger Band alumni, parents, friends, and supporters was clearly evident.

I've told Mr. Parets this, but he is a large part of the reason I'm in the field of student affairs. His work with the band was as simple as it was risky, as perfect as it was nonsensical to many: Simply put, he let the students run the band. The leadership each year was the senior class, and that group of students made decisions including repertoire, trips, and more, while truly having the opportunity to serve as leaders to their peers. It was my experience as a leader within that organization, as well as excellent role modeling by Mr. Parets, that started me on the path that would ultimately lead to my career.

At the ceremony, Mr. Parets spoke relatively little; most spoke to, for, and about him. But in his brief remarks, he speaks volumes to the value of education:

(I suggest you listen to, not watch, the video, which was er, masterfully captured by my 14 month old daughter)

Someone Else's Sick Day

By and large, I don't take many sick days. This isn't out of stubbornness, or a desire to be student affairs' Cal Ripken; I've just been fortunate enough not to need to. I will occasionally tally a sick day (or hours) for a doctor's appointment, but when I'm actually not feeling well and legitimately need to take a sick day, I don't hesitate, or so I thought.

As I take a mental inventory of the times I've called out, I realize that if I'm completely honest with myself, I'll admit that I more or less schedule sick days. It's typically within reason, but if I'm not feeling my best and can push missing any work off to a time that's convenient to leave early/come in late/miss a day, I almost always do.

Things have changed. 

Eleven months (two days and 12 minutes, but who's counting?) ago, I took on a new role in life: That of Daddy. In my role as Director of the First Year Experience (one of my favorite student affairs/new parent jokes, and I've got less than a month to keep using it!) I learned quickly that there's no scheduling sick days when it comes to my daughter. If she's sick, whether it means a trip to the doctor or just that she can't go to day care, my wife and I typically take inventory of each of our days to see which of us is best equipped to miss that time from work. We've been fortunate that it's worked out to a pretty even split thus far, and we will sometimes split a day in half so that we can each attend to things we need to. Still, when we wake up in the morning and realize we'll have to put a sick day plan into place, I can't help but feel inconvenienced, whether I'm missing meetings, events, or jut work that I need to get done in the office.

Don't get it twisted. The world stops for my daughter, and rightfully so. But still, coming from a mold of taking time when it's most convenient for me, I can sometimes feel like I'm missing something, that I'm not present or not pulling my weight. I sometimes try to work from home (though if you've ever tried this with a sick infant afoot, you know how hit-or-miss that can be) but so much of work in student activities is actually being there. And while my staff, students, colleagues and supervisor all certainly understand, I still admittedly find the uncertainty frustrating at times. Of course, it's not anywhere near frustrating enough for me not to do what's best for my daughter, it's just one of many new wrinkles to get used to in my life as a parent.

On Balance

In related news to the previous post, a big theme in our field--and I suspect many others--is "work-life balance". A conversation I had not too long ago led me to take a look at that term a bit.

In the aforementioned chat, someone brought forth the term "work-life negotiation," emphasizing the constant give and take of the two roles. That said, there's a new term I prefer: Job-home balance. The way I see it, my life is exactly that, my life, all-encompassing. As such, my work is naturally part of that. I'm not striking balance between two things, because those two things, by their very nature intersect and overlap. Job-home balance, however, means to me that I do my best to keep my home life at home and my job in (and around) the office. This is the balance I seek to strike.

What The Hell Am I Doing Here?

Title with all due respect to Radiohead and the Bluecoats Drum & Bugle Corps' 2011 production, which is fresh on my mind.


So I won't lie to you. I know plenty of friends and colleagues of mine have student affairs-centric blogs, but I didn't see myself ever going that route. After a few consecutive thoughts of "I really ought to write about that", I thought I'd go ahead and dive in.

Make no mistake, I'm no stranger to the medium. I'm ten years deep in the blog* game, maintaining a LiveJournal for most of that time and starting the content that would evolve into 80 Minutes of Regulation back in  2007.  Still, it's long been my stance that I blog my hobbies, not my profession. As I mentioned above, a few recent ideas for posts necessitated a place to put them, so here we stand. I don't know at this juncture how prolific I'll be, but I'm stepping into the ring.

The title is derived from a phrase I have often uttered about my role in the field of student affairs, specifically campus activities: I am an educator first; programmer second. Sometimes, it's a close second. Time will tell if this becomes a "close second" to my other blogging pursuits.

*I want to go on record: I actually hate the word "blog". Its etymology involves putting two words together and splitting them up again at a previously unagreed-to spot. I'll also note that while many do not, I draw a distinction between my LiveJournal, in which I wrote about myself, and my blogs, in which I write about stuff.