Most of us have some kind of meaning in our lives. We live for our God, or our parents, or to serve others, or even to serve ourselves. We do a job we see as worthwhile, or did at one point. We had to justify why we chose that career, whether it was for the outcome of the industry, the people we work for, the people we work with.. there are a variety of reasons why we do our jobs, but we rarely, if ever, realize that dream.
Why do I do what I do? I have many many reasons and they are all sound:
- I'm passionate about education and helping people better themselves
- I'm passionate about developing responsible citizenship in our future leaders
- I'm passionate about working with college students and helping them find themselves
- I'm passionate about training and development in the workplace
- I'm passionate about creating educational moments for young adults as they first branch out on their own.
On top of that, I'm really great at forging a new path. I love to develop and implement new ideas, but once they have been tried and are a success I have no desire to repeat the experience. I want to develop the ideas my way and then pass them off to someone else to implement. So even fall workshop this year was a pain the ass. I didn't enjoy it like I normally do because while the sessions are perfect, the training model is. This makes it hard for me to stay focused. So I checked out for part of training. Mainly because there are other stresses flowing my way and it's hard to focus on training when I'm getting pushed the other way. It's also frustrating because I'm the only one who cares about training and I feel like I'm the only one who cares about our staff. This pisses me off so i try not to focus on it.
So, needless to say, training has been kind of tough on me this year. The student staff are amazing and have done a great job at keeping up the positive attitudes and being awesome. Which is great! We had our mock graduation today and we made diplomas, which were cool even if I do say so myself. We had an awesome speaker who was funny AND motivational-- which was so much better than last year. So it all ended on a great note. To celebrate the end of training we had a night out at the Student Rec Center for our student staff. It was there that my entire purpose and life were reaffirmed.
I was sitting just inside the SRC when one of our student staff sat down beside me. I never remember conversations word for word, but the gist is here: She said that she had wanted to talk to me for a while since training started and didn't know if she should just say what she wanted to say or write a note, but she was going to say it now. She said I was an inspiration to her. She said she was glad she got to meet me because while she had received emails from me for work, she was excited to meet me. She said that she truly felt like we care about her and that she finds me an inspiration. She said that whether I realized it or not, I am an inspiration to a lot of people. She said that she liked the session when I talked to them about their purpose and that student success is important. She felt that I really cared about them as individuals and really did care about their success. She said that because of me she has decided that she wants to go into student affairs and wants to do what I do.
I'm not going to lie -- I teared up when she was telling me that. It's not every day you're told that you inspired someone else. I don't know if any of it is true or if it's just how she's feeling on a training high.. but it was really life affirming and made all the stress of the last two weeks melt away.
I do love my work.
No comments:
Post a Comment