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005 - Reflections on Professional Families | Tanya Massey [Past President]
9 Plays3 years ago
We start off the New Year with a conversation with another SWACUHO Past President, Tanya Massey from Oklahoma State University. Tanya spent a number of years focusing on the human resources component of campus housing, so we dive into importance and nuance of recruitment and training staff. We then explore the value of developing small skills with long term career impact before jumping into association involvement. In that part of the conversation, Tanya discusses the challenges with balancing volunteerism, professional responsibilities, and personal/family lives. We of course end with some fun stories demonstrating the importance of “making work fun”. Throughout all the discussion items, Tanya reiterates the value of having a professional family.
Be Sure to Thank Our Guest!
Connect with Tanya on LinkedIn
Download the Reflection Guide! - If you put anything into action from the Podcast, please consider sharing it via swacuhopodcast@gmail.com and you may get featured on an upcoming episode.
Seeking professional advice? Fill out this anonymous form and a panel of housing staff will give you their take on your situation on an upcoming podcast.
Contact the SWACUHO Podcast at swacuhopodcast@gmail.com.
People, Places, and Things Mentioned in This Episode:
Deckard Cain [YouTube]
Ashleigh Beckmann [Instagram]
Katy Pelton[LinkedIn]
Episode 004 – Preventative Maintenance [SWACUHO Podcast Episode]
Oklahoma State University [University Website]
Stillwater School Board [Organization Website]
DampRid [Moisture Absorber]
Kansas State University [University Website]
Aggie Lounge [Business]
Departmental Politics 101 [SWACUHO U Presentation]
Strengths Quest [Personal Assessment]
The Office [TV Show]
MySpace [“Social Media” Site]
Southwest Contract[Business]
Arkansas Tech University [University Website]
Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action [Book]
How Great Leaders Inspire Action [TED Talk]
Lonesome Dove [Book]
Recommended![025 - Fun Topics from the ACUHO-I Community Forum | Joel Gatti [Feature Topic] image](https://media.zencastr.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=112,quality=85/image-files/605db9539a00e40074826685/733e7e3d-9d73-4dce-9fd9-65d29d14b4dd.)
Transcript
Podcast Launch and Listener Engagement
00:00:00
Speaker
Happy New Year to the Swakuho Nation.
00:00:03
Speaker
With Executive Board approval of the direction put forth in the first four demo episodes, this podcast is now officially, quote, a thing.
00:00:12
Speaker
For those of you who have been listening since the beginning, thanks for your support.
00:00:16
Speaker
For those of you new to the podcast, I welcome you and hope you take Deckard Cain's sage advice and stay a while and listen.
00:00:24
Speaker
A couple quick housekeeping items before we begin today.
00:00:27
Speaker
You may have noticed we have a new podcast logo this month.
00:00:30
Speaker
The new logo was designed by Ashley Beckman from the University of Texas at Dallas.
Listener Query: Amber Alert in Previous Episode
00:00:35
Speaker
I do feel obligated to say that her design and artistry capabilities far exceed the logo she made, but I specifically asked her to make it simple, less than perfect, and a little rough around the edges because I felt that more accurately captured the charm of the show in these early days.
00:00:51
Speaker
Please check out some of our other photography work linked in the show notes.
00:00:55
Speaker
It's also been fun to hear from listeners.
00:00:58
Speaker
Someone asked me if they knew what Katie Pelton's emergency alarm was that interrupted episode four.
00:01:03
Speaker
I went back to the unedited rough tracks and confirmed it was an Amber Alert and not some maintenance crisis.
00:01:09
Speaker
But wouldn't that have been so meta had it been a crisis that could have been averted due to preventative maintenance?
00:01:15
Speaker
I also want to give a shout out to one of my oldest friends, Craig Van Blercom, who works in the Big Apple, but not in campus housing.
00:01:22
Speaker
He messaged me saying, quote, I've listened to all four episodes and I still don't know what Swakuho is.
Explaining Swakuho's Regional Importance
00:01:29
Speaker
So to demonstrate how I consider and respond to listener feedback, Craig, Swakuho is the Southwest Association for College and University Housing Officers, the Regional Professional Association for Housing Peeps in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas.
00:01:44
Speaker
The real lesson here, though, is if Craig in New York City with zero housing experience has listened to every episode while not having a clue about what Swakuho is, then I really see no good reason why housing folks in our region aren't listening yet.
00:01:59
Speaker
So make sure to encourage your colleagues to listen to the podcast.
00:02:02
Speaker
That's the price of admission here.
00:02:05
Speaker
I love hearing from listeners, so feel free to drop me a line at swakuhopodcast at gmail.com and ask anything you want, related or not, or just send some critical feedback.
00:02:15
Speaker
You never know, you may get a shout out on the podcast like Craig, but if you send some hate mail, it just might be graded on air.
Introducing Tanya Massey: Career and Personal Life
00:02:24
Speaker
Moving on, today we're talking to another Swakuho past president and one of my all-time favorite housing people, Tanya Massey.
00:02:32
Speaker
Tanya has worked at Oklahoma State University for the past 16 years in various roles.
00:02:37
Speaker
Her Swakuho volunteerism includes serving as time and place chair, secretary, president, and annual conference host committee chair.
00:02:46
Speaker
She enjoys the relationships and family feel of the Swakuho region.
00:02:51
Speaker
Tanya has also served on the Akuho-I programming committee and more recently made the somewhat sketchy decision to apply for her local school board during the pandemic.
00:03:01
Speaker
She is a mother of three, an avid fan of college football, and a survivor of her spouse's successful completion of a PhD program.
00:03:12
Speaker
She also loves babies, dogs, and Christmas trees, of which she has 11.
00:03:18
Speaker
Tanya, welcome to the show.
00:03:21
Speaker
Well, thank you, JC.
00:03:23
Speaker
I'm excited to be here.
00:03:25
Speaker
I'm so glad to hear that.
00:03:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:27
Speaker
So tell me, since you mentioned the prior podcast, did you ever get that leak fixed above your kitchen sink?
00:03:33
Speaker
You know, I'm glad you asked.
00:03:35
Speaker
Yes.
00:03:36
Speaker
Actually, I did not personally figure out what it was.
00:03:40
Speaker
My lovely wife actually figured out that it was one of those damp rid moisture things in the closet upstairs that had broken.
00:03:49
Speaker
It pulls moisture out of the air and it broke and was leaking down in the closet through apparently a crack in the
00:03:57
Speaker
floor that was then running along the soffit.
00:03:59
Speaker
So thanks to my wife, we figured it out.
00:04:02
Speaker
It was not some major maintenance plumbing problem like I was assuming.
00:04:06
Speaker
But I guess that's the lesson here is that sometimes in maintenance, you solve one problem only to reveal other problems because now I've got a pathway for pests and probably some air control problems that I'll have to deal with later, but no plumbing.
00:04:21
Speaker
All right.
00:04:21
Speaker
Well, you know, that's the joy of homeownership, right?
00:04:24
Speaker
Isn't that the truth?
00:04:25
Speaker
Always something needing done somewhere.
00:04:28
Speaker
So first things first, Tanya, you were a residence life coordinator at Kansas State when I was an RA there.
Humorous Anecdotes: Kitchen Leak and Pickled Eggs
00:04:34
Speaker
I never worked for you directly, but I heard complaints that your on-campus apartment often smelled like pickled eggs.
00:04:45
Speaker
That is unfortunately accurate.
00:04:48
Speaker
And while you never directly worked for me, I hold you personally responsible for the pickled eggs through your connection with my husband and the desire to learn how to make pickled eggs from your favorite adult downtown spot.
00:05:04
Speaker
I think, you know, when I came home and opened the fridge that first time and there was a huge jar of pickled eggs in there, I thought I'm going to kill somebody and I don't know who.
00:05:14
Speaker
And yet Josh and I are still here.
00:05:16
Speaker
So glad you did not act upon that.
00:05:19
Speaker
But I guess I forgot that you were the one that was complaining about it, not other people.
00:05:23
Speaker
No, I think my staff seemed to enjoy them.
00:05:26
Speaker
And obviously even Josh enjoyed them.
00:05:29
Speaker
But the rule after that was that all pickled eggs must be kept in a fridge away from a private property that I have any sort of ownership for.
00:05:37
Speaker
I think that's a fair outcome.
00:05:39
Speaker
And they certainly weren't as good as the Aggie Lounge provided, but we did our best.
00:05:45
Speaker
It's a process, I think.
00:05:46
Speaker
And I, you know, one of the things that I appreciate about you, JC, is you always have the most interesting hobbies.
00:05:53
Speaker
You candle making, pasta, you know, learning how to hang sheetrock.
00:05:57
Speaker
But I don't know that I would ever brag on being the best pickled egg maker out there.
00:06:03
Speaker
So that's one you can skip.
00:06:05
Speaker
Well, I think that's a lesson for all our listeners is it's good to try things, even though we're not going to be successful in all of them.
00:06:11
Speaker
And that's what I've learned that, you know, I failed as much as I've succeeded in life.
Challenges in University Roles: Move-in Days and HR Insights
00:06:16
Speaker
So Tanya, housing staff across the region are gearing up for the start of the spring semester and moving residents back in from the break.
00:06:23
Speaker
What's your most memorable move-in experience?
00:06:26
Speaker
Oh, probably two that I would outline.
00:06:30
Speaker
One of them was at Kansas State and we had
00:06:33
Speaker
tornado warnings happening right in the middle of move-in.
00:06:39
Speaker
And so the parking lot was full of cars and it's how do you get everyone in?
00:06:43
Speaker
And there's a very interesting phenomenon, I think, in that region of the country that you could kind of tell where people were from by what they did when the sirens would go off and those type of things.
00:06:54
Speaker
And there was definitely a population that all went to the basement and were quiet and orderly.
00:06:58
Speaker
And then there was a larger population that all ran to their cars.
00:07:03
Speaker
because they were going to chase it.
00:07:06
Speaker
And so not being of the region, I think that was very interesting for me to watch how, knowing they were adults and they could do what they want, but the mom in me was like, that's not safe.
00:07:17
Speaker
What are you doing?
00:07:19
Speaker
But that was an interesting one.
00:07:21
Speaker
I also think watching during COVID move in was very interesting.
00:07:25
Speaker
And how do you...
00:07:27
Speaker
structure the fun and joy of the college experience where you don't want to touch anybody, you don't want to touch their stuff, you don't want to get close, and you have to kind of maintain what your safety protocols are in the midst of this very emotional time for families.
00:07:43
Speaker
Yeah, definitely.
00:07:44
Speaker
The COVID one of managing expectations and everyone's boundaries, that certainly threw a wrench in things as well.
00:07:51
Speaker
At one point in your career, a big part of your job was the human resources component.
00:07:57
Speaker
Why is human resources so important to be able to do well?
00:08:01
Speaker
Well, for me, I stepped into that role for a couple of different reasons.
00:08:05
Speaker
One, I had had a very traditional residence education background on the res life side, but I had worked a lot with our committees for hiring and recruiting of student staff and our graduate staff, as well as the training functions for both of those levels.
00:08:22
Speaker
And we were doing some reorganizing as a department, and we were going to put our committees with our human resources and our payroll and budgeting.
00:08:30
Speaker
And so knowing that those were passion areas of mine was a bit of a nudge to kind of think about, do I want to look at this other role?
00:08:39
Speaker
And the two things that I think most ResLife people don't have enough knowledge of when they want to move up is budget process and facilities process.
00:08:49
Speaker
And I had been really lucky to be part of a construction project at Kansas State for a major renovation of the building that I ever saw.
00:08:57
Speaker
And so knowing that I wanted to do more budget work, the human resources role was a really good opportunity to understand the payroll budgets and what compensation and benefits look like.
00:09:08
Speaker
The other thing that was really interesting to me is how we develop our staff and our teams leads the way on how our students are treated on our campus.
00:09:17
Speaker
And so I
00:09:18
Speaker
I wanted to have a role in really thinking about how we develop our graduate assistantship and what those graduate assistantships are doing on a day-to-day basis in the buildings.
00:09:28
Speaker
And so I took that role along, kept it for about five years, and then transitioned back into more of a hall management, overseeing multiple halls on our campus.
00:09:41
Speaker
But it taught me a lot about budgets.
00:09:43
Speaker
It taught me a lot about internal processes.
00:09:47
Speaker
And about onboarding software, we onboarded Banner as a payroll system while I was in that role across the university.
00:09:54
Speaker
And if you've never lived through one of those major onboardings, they're not always fun, but they teach you a lot.
00:10:01
Speaker
Those transitions could be, you could feel the problems from those for a long time.
00:10:06
Speaker
Yes, absolutely.
00:10:08
Speaker
So you've probably interviewed and reviewed a ton of resumes in your day and cover letters.
00:10:14
Speaker
What's your biggest irritant on a resume or cover letter?
00:10:19
Speaker
You know, I think for me, one, not proofreading your cover letter and having a glaring error like another school listed.
00:10:28
Speaker
I've done that a number of times.
00:10:30
Speaker
But I also think your cover letter is your chance to tell your story.
00:10:35
Speaker
And I was talking to a friend the other day of, you know, I haven't put together a cover letter in a long time.
00:10:40
Speaker
I haven't felt the need to.
00:10:42
Speaker
And so even sitting down to write one, as we talk to our grad students about going into the job search next year, sitting down to even start the cover letter is a challenge.
00:10:51
Speaker
But that's a chance to really highlight some things from your resume and talk about not only what you accomplished in there, but where you want to go moving forward.
00:11:00
Speaker
So it's a really good snapshot of what you see is your story.
00:11:05
Speaker
That is something that I don't know that everyone in student affairs does really well is tell our story.
00:11:10
Speaker
And so how do we figure out how to share what we are passionate about with where we want to go and what we've accomplished along the way as part of that application material?
00:11:22
Speaker
What do you think about a bulleted cover letter, like just a cover letter where they're listed bullets?
00:11:28
Speaker
You know, I think that that's interesting because I've seen more of those come out in the past couple of years.
00:11:33
Speaker
And really, I think it depends on what type of role you're looking at and where those bullets kind of land in the grand scheme
Career Development: Storytelling in Applications
00:11:41
Speaker
of things.
00:11:41
Speaker
I think if you're talking about these are my major accomplishments during this role, then it could very well fit into a cover letter.
00:11:49
Speaker
I love the bulleted cover letter.
00:11:50
Speaker
And it took me a lot.
00:11:51
Speaker
I'm a very structured, like I don't like change on those things, but like took me a long time.
00:11:56
Speaker
And it's like,
00:11:58
Speaker
I'll never go back because I feel like I can maximize the content instead of like introducing narrative paragraphs about whatever is going on.
00:12:07
Speaker
It's like, here's all the things I've done and how they're relevant.
00:12:10
Speaker
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
00:12:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:12
Speaker
And I think that that's the key point of it is, you know, your cover letter has to talk about what you've accomplished and how it fits into what you're looking for.
00:12:21
Speaker
Oh, definitely.
00:12:22
Speaker
Definitely.
00:12:23
Speaker
In candidate interviews, are you one of those interviewers who likes to ask follow-up questions or do you stick to the script?
00:12:30
Speaker
Well, I think it depends on what part of the interview it's at.
00:12:36
Speaker
I think, you know, when you're really evaluating candidates, you have to make sure that you're removing your bias and that you're comparing every candidate to an accurate assessment of what the questions are that are asked.
00:12:49
Speaker
And so I tend to stick to the script.
00:12:53
Speaker
where we're looking at this is the question and this is how I'm ranking their answer.
00:12:58
Speaker
But I do think I really like to use those conversations after the interview is over to find out more about maybe the why some of their decision making or if they said something that kind of struck me personally as interesting to learn a little bit more about who they are as a candidate.
00:13:16
Speaker
But I think when you're evaluating those candidates, you need to make sure that your metrics are uniform across the board.
00:13:22
Speaker
just to really kind of remove some of that bias.
00:13:25
Speaker
I like the follow-up moments.
00:13:26
Speaker
And at my last job in the wrap-up sessions, we'd always offer like a do-over and we'd preface it by, we know these days are long and anxiety is like, are there anything upon reflection, you're like, I just didn't nail that question.
00:13:42
Speaker
And that was always kind of a nice little candid moment of like, yeah, I was meeting with so-and-so and I really felt like,
00:13:49
Speaker
my answer didn't come across or whatever.
00:13:51
Speaker
And so there are contexts and time and place.
00:13:53
Speaker
I agree with you.
00:13:55
Speaker
You've mentioned in those follow-up questions, is there anything on a resume that if you see it, you will always ask about it in those like follow-up moments?
00:14:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:07
Speaker
I really like to know how people contribute to the profession, both on their campus and away from their campus.
00:14:15
Speaker
And so I
00:14:16
Speaker
If they're part of an association, if they have served on a board or through regional leadership, I like to know a little bit more about why.
00:14:25
Speaker
Like, what was their experience in doing that?
00:14:28
Speaker
Why did they choose to do that?
00:14:30
Speaker
Would they do it again?
00:14:31
Speaker
But I also like to plug a little bit about how do they balance that workload of association work with their campus work?
00:14:40
Speaker
And, you know, I think that's a fine line.
00:14:43
Speaker
We want to advance the profession, but we can't do it at the risk of our students on our campus.
00:14:48
Speaker
Yeah, definitely.
00:14:48
Speaker
We'll definitely loop back around to that.
00:14:51
Speaker
What goes on in your head when interviewing someone for their first full-time job and they say, my long-term goal is to be a university president?
00:15:03
Speaker
There's not enough presidents out there for everyone I've heard that answer from.
00:15:08
Speaker
You know, I think I have definitely interviewed some graduate candidates that I can see they're going to get there.
00:15:15
Speaker
You can see that they have a drive and a determination and a path.
00:15:18
Speaker
But I don't know that student affairs is traditionally the way to get to that university president role.
00:15:26
Speaker
I think, you know, much like when we talk about directors, it used to be that that PhD was kind of the end goal and that gave you the next stepping stone.
00:15:36
Speaker
But I think that there are sometimes better skill sets to get you where you really want to be.
00:15:42
Speaker
Budget experience.
00:15:43
Speaker
I think fundraising for university presidents is essential right now because as we see state legislators cut back on higher education, that fundraising is going to be paramount to how they succeed moving forward.
00:15:57
Speaker
And so sometimes I think some of those roles are
00:16:01
Speaker
are more important than a PhD.
00:16:04
Speaker
Not to say that a PhD is not valid, but I also think sometimes the research components and the knowledge in some of those areas may be a better launchpad than the student services.
00:16:16
Speaker
Not that one is more valuable to the other, but I think when you think about the university structure, they play a part that is probably valued more from a board of regents.
00:16:27
Speaker
That's kind of a weird question.
00:16:29
Speaker
It's one that I love.
00:16:30
Speaker
It's like an abstract idea I think about because whenever I hear it, and maybe this is just my thing, but whenever I hear it, I just immediately have so many thoughts in my head.
00:16:40
Speaker
And from a practical standpoint, I'm like, okay, there's a pathway to get there, probably through a VP job.
00:16:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:48
Speaker
You don't even know if you're going to like being a director yet.
00:16:51
Speaker
And so I think sometimes having, I'm all supportive of having long-term goals, but anytime someone asks me in an interview, it's like, what's your five to 10 year goals?
00:17:00
Speaker
I really just want to find a job I enjoy and I can do well in.
00:17:04
Speaker
And as I grow and develop in that, we'll see what happens after that.
00:17:08
Speaker
But what if I hated being a vice president of student affairs?
00:17:11
Speaker
Do I really think then I would enjoy being a president?
00:17:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:16
Speaker
I mean, I think when I think about what universities, universities are many corporations and they're multifaceted and the student services skill set can do lots of amazing things in that area.
00:17:29
Speaker
But the budgeting, the fundraising foundation side of things, the public perception, being able to handle kind of that
00:17:39
Speaker
just how to spend things appropriately for the public.
00:17:42
Speaker
Those are not always skill sets that student affairs has the market on.
00:17:47
Speaker
Those tend to fall in other areas.
00:17:50
Speaker
And, you know, I don't know that I think student affairs professionals are always great politicians because they're genuine.
00:17:56
Speaker
And that doesn't always come across well when you're trying to spend things for public perceptions.
00:18:03
Speaker
Yeah,
Navigating Campus Politics and Staff Development Issues
00:18:04
Speaker
definitely.
00:18:04
Speaker
And campus politics is, I did a, I actually did a session on departmental politics with Swakuho U this past year.
00:18:11
Speaker
And it's one of those things that I think everybody experiences, or at least they think they are to some degree.
00:18:16
Speaker
I've never really seen any training sessions or graduate programs on campus politics or whatever, but, and it's maybe an unfortunate thing you just learn by doing and you learn from failing at it from time to time.
00:18:28
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's valid.
00:18:30
Speaker
I think my mindset is we do StrengthsQuest with our staff on a pretty regular basis.
00:18:36
Speaker
Every couple of years, we'll do it again.
00:18:37
Speaker
And this year, one of our staff convinced me to go ahead and buy the whole pack, you know, not just the five that we get as part of our training, but go ahead and invest in knowing what every one of my strengths are.
00:18:51
Speaker
And I have always joked that Woo is my bottom.
00:18:54
Speaker
Like it's three out of 35 or 36.
00:18:57
Speaker
I think there's 36.
00:18:59
Speaker
So when I got it, I was really shocked that Woo was not dead last.
00:19:03
Speaker
Now it's in the 30s.
00:19:04
Speaker
So it's really high up there.
00:19:08
Speaker
But yeah.
00:19:09
Speaker
I don't know that I will ever be good at playing a political game, but I will trust the work I've done and my diligence and follow through will carry me towards where I need to be because people will trust that I know that I'm going to do what I say I do.
00:19:26
Speaker
Yeah, and that's a perfect point because I made a similar comment about in this presentation of breaking it down into some very basic understandable of like, you know, there's longevity capital.
00:19:37
Speaker
People have been there a long time.
00:19:38
Speaker
They have additional capital, people with higher job titles, people with unique skill sets.
00:19:43
Speaker
But it was like the number one thing you have is like solid, consistent performance.
00:19:48
Speaker
And while that may not work compared to some situations or whatever the case may be, solid performance is...
00:19:56
Speaker
going to get you there too.
00:19:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:59
Speaker
I've always thought Wu would be my lowest or one of my lowest also, but people are like, no, no, no, you're really great.
00:20:06
Speaker
I think it manifests though through other things.
00:20:09
Speaker
It's like, I really don't care about Wu, but because of the other strengths I have, it sometimes manifests itself.
00:20:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:17
Speaker
I think that was really interesting.
00:20:18
Speaker
I was shocked that adaptability was my lowest strength.
00:20:21
Speaker
Really?
00:20:22
Speaker
And I thought, are you serious?
00:20:24
Speaker
Because I feel like I can pivot really well.
00:20:27
Speaker
But I dug into that a little more.
00:20:29
Speaker
And what I realized is discipline is my number one.
00:20:33
Speaker
And so because I work ahead and I'm very analytical and strategic in how I process through a lot of things, I'm usually ahead enough of the game that when those last minute things pop up, I can manage them because I'm not behind.
00:20:50
Speaker
And I'm not on a timeline crunch to get other things done.
00:20:53
Speaker
I've already planned that.
00:20:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:55
Speaker
Or you're not needing to adapt because it's planned within, it's strategic plan for those contingencies.
00:21:01
Speaker
Yes.
00:21:02
Speaker
And so, you know, the student crisis that comes up, really, that's not adaptability to be able to step out and go handle that.
00:21:10
Speaker
That's, you know, knowing what the process is, being very clear about what your role is and what the support networks look like and how you connect those students to the right network.
00:21:19
Speaker
Definitely.
00:21:21
Speaker
We talked about interviewing.
00:21:22
Speaker
You also mentioned working with the graduate program and the training and what they're doing.
00:21:28
Speaker
Do you think that staff performance issues are typically a training issue or a recruitment issue?
00:21:36
Speaker
I think it can be a little of both.
00:21:38
Speaker
And I think through that with the context of one of my favorite team members has consistently had to address a staff issue on her team.
00:21:48
Speaker
And I was having a conversation with a coworker thinking, OK, is this staff member really hard on her staff?
00:21:55
Speaker
I don't think so, because I think she's very clear.
00:21:57
Speaker
And, you know, Brene Brown will say to be direct is to be kind.
00:22:02
Speaker
And I think that what I appreciate is you can recruit people who look phenomenal on paper, but you don't really know how well they're going to do until they're in the environment doing the work.
00:22:17
Speaker
right?
00:22:17
Speaker
They could have had what I think of as the Sunday school answers in the interview.
00:22:22
Speaker
They could have had really great references that were very much about promoting and cheerleading them and maybe not the best at being direct about what their areas of growth would be.
00:22:34
Speaker
And so recruiting wise, I think you can get people that, you know, you don't always know what you're going to get till they're in place.
00:22:42
Speaker
I think training wise, you can train, but
00:22:45
Speaker
Really, when I think in August and July, it's like drinking out of a fire hose, right?
00:22:50
Speaker
They're new to your school.
00:22:52
Speaker
They're new to the role.
00:22:54
Speaker
They're really for the first time on their own.
00:22:57
Speaker
You know, when you're an undergrad, you're still kind of connected to mom and dad.
00:23:00
Speaker
But when you're a grad student, you're like, OK, well, bills are your own bills.
00:23:04
Speaker
But yeah.
00:23:05
Speaker
they get all this new information and they're trying to adapt on where they're living and who their peer group is and what their academic program is and if it's going to be challenging from their undergrad.
00:23:16
Speaker
And so really, I think training can, has to be more than just that July, August timeframe training almost, it has to be a weekly part of the one-on-one.
00:23:28
Speaker
It has to be what I think of, uh,
00:23:32
Speaker
I joke because I introduced this on our campus.
00:23:34
Speaker
I call it the mullet 101.
00:23:37
Speaker
Of course.
00:23:39
Speaker
You know, I do have a thing for the mullet in general, but really I need to know in every one-on-one, I'm going to ask the same type of questions in the same type of order.
00:23:49
Speaker
I'm going to want to know about your students of concern and your staff because the people matter most to me.
00:23:55
Speaker
And then I'm going to ask about facilities and the budget stuff in your area and your conduct and
00:24:01
Speaker
And then we're going to kind of get into what the party phase is, whatever you want to talk about.
00:24:06
Speaker
You know, if we want to ideate, but really, if we're not covering that business in the front, then what we're talking about in the back isn't serving our students.
00:24:17
Speaker
And so I think that's where a lot of the training goes on.
00:24:21
Speaker
So I'll get a new staff member and every week I'm a checklist person.
00:24:25
Speaker
So, you know, in the one-on-ones, I pull out that checklist and I'm like, okay, do you understand this skill set?
00:24:30
Speaker
Do you understand how to do this?
00:24:32
Speaker
Do we need to refresh on this?
00:24:34
Speaker
Tell me what questions you have that have come up during the week and how do I best support you moving forward in the next week?
00:24:41
Speaker
But really that training has to be ongoing or they're not going to flourish.
00:24:48
Speaker
The mullet one-on-one, you heard it here first, folks.
00:24:51
Speaker
That's right.
00:24:52
Speaker
Putting you on the spot a little bit here, what's the most embarrassing thing you've done as a candidate in an interview process?
Tanya's Personal Stories: Interview Incident and Problem-Solving Philosophy
00:25:00
Speaker
Oh, I spit out my drink at a dinner.
00:25:07
Speaker
We were at a group, a table of people, and one of what would have been my peers at this school said something that was kind of out of pocket, but so funny in what I think of as like Michael Scott's
00:25:22
Speaker
from the office type mentality that I had just taken a drink of water and blew it all over the table.
00:25:33
Speaker
Did you get the job?
00:25:35
Speaker
I got an offer.
00:25:37
Speaker
I did not take the job.
00:25:39
Speaker
Um, at that time it was not what I thought was going to be a good fit, but I did realize in that, uh, session that I, um, there are some things that,
00:25:51
Speaker
you will just have to recover from, and they're going to be embarrassing in the long run, but it's just, it happens.
00:25:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:00
Speaker
And it's important, I think, not to overthink those moments.
00:26:03
Speaker
Yes.
00:26:04
Speaker
All right.
00:26:05
Speaker
So tell us about a small niche skill you developed that had a big long-term positive impact on your career.
00:26:14
Speaker
My favorite football coach, Dabo Sweeney, talked a lot a couple of years ago about
00:26:21
Speaker
how Alabama was the elephant.
00:26:23
Speaker
Not only, you know, is that their mascot, but that they were this impossible beast to really get past in college football.
00:26:33
Speaker
And he talked a lot about how do you eat an elephant?
00:26:35
Speaker
Well, you eat it one bite at a time.
00:26:37
Speaker
And I think a lot of times in life in general, but in student affairs, we think about the big, huge problems.
00:26:46
Speaker
I was having a conversation with
00:26:48
Speaker
how our students right now view volunteerism.
00:26:51
Speaker
They want to solve world hunger, but they don't know what small steps to take to solve world hunger.
00:26:56
Speaker
Right.
00:26:57
Speaker
Yes.
00:26:58
Speaker
But I think about one of the things that I learned early on in my career is that sometimes there's an elephant.
00:27:05
Speaker
We don't understand what it is, but we have to figure out how to move forward.
00:27:10
Speaker
And when we sit and fret and don't make decisions, decisions get made for us or we
00:27:18
Speaker
students are impacted negatively.
00:27:20
Speaker
And so what I have learned how to do is to just think about, I can't fix the whole problem, but let me start chipping away at it.
00:27:27
Speaker
What are the small problems I can fix?
00:27:29
Speaker
Can I fix it in one community?
00:27:32
Speaker
Can I fix it in one building?
00:27:34
Speaker
Can I fix it for my campus?
00:27:37
Speaker
And then start to put those smaller plans together till you develop a larger comprehensive plan.
00:27:44
Speaker
And I think about that
00:27:46
Speaker
you know, really, when we think about COVID, COVID was so overwhelming in a lot of ways.
00:27:52
Speaker
And it was a massive problem that none of us, regardless of how much pandemic SARS preparation we had been through, if you'd been through any of those crisis management courses, we were not prepared for COVID.
00:28:05
Speaker
I don't think, you know, there might have been some of the groundwork laid at the
00:28:10
Speaker
50,000 foot level.
00:28:12
Speaker
But when you think about actual implementation on the ground, I don't know that there were very many student affairs professionals that were really prepared.
00:28:21
Speaker
And I remember joking with my staff team that it was going to be like the Spanish flu of 1918.
00:28:25
Speaker
And they laughed at me and I set a pandemic and they laughed.
00:28:30
Speaker
And then they have eaten their words since then.
00:28:33
Speaker
But I think when we talk about what we did during that time,
00:28:37
Speaker
Some of it was like, okay, how do we get stuff out of the halls?
00:28:40
Speaker
That's a small problem.
00:28:41
Speaker
Let's work on that problem first and document that.
00:28:45
Speaker
And then let's talk about how do we maintain services for students who don't have a home to go to?
00:28:51
Speaker
Here at Oklahoma State, we have a large population of students who have aged out of foster care.
00:28:57
Speaker
And so their Res Life housing is their housing.
00:29:01
Speaker
And they don't have, you know, they don't go home for breaks.
00:29:04
Speaker
We stay open for those opportunities.
00:29:06
Speaker
Or we have students without reliable internet in their hometown or because of their identity, they may not feel comfortable in their family home.
00:29:16
Speaker
You know, whatever that looks like.
00:29:18
Speaker
We have a number of students that needed to stay.
00:29:20
Speaker
We had about a thousand students that remained on campus with us.
00:29:23
Speaker
So how do we provide housing for them that is safe and secure?
00:29:27
Speaker
How do we staff that, that, you know, is safe and secure?
00:29:30
Speaker
How do we maintain that our staff are safe?
00:29:33
Speaker
that are on call and that are responding to things.
00:29:37
Speaker
And so really, I think the thing that I developed early in my career is find out what the problem is and then start breaking it down into smaller pieces to figure out how do you make a plan forward?
00:29:49
Speaker
And so I think people that have worked with me will realize I don't always have one plan.
00:29:55
Speaker
Usually I have plan A and I have plan B and I have plan C. During COVID, I think we had seven
00:30:03
Speaker
occupancy plans, just in case.
00:30:07
Speaker
But I realized that the logistics of things are where I've developed a skill set that I can put to use and then say, okay, here's our plan.
00:30:18
Speaker
And if this plan fails, here's the next plan.
00:30:21
Speaker
And I like to vet things before I show them to people.
00:30:25
Speaker
So I've worked on it and I've put it to the side and I come back to it and I work on it some more.
00:30:29
Speaker
And
00:30:30
Speaker
Then I'll go to some trusted peers and say, hey, look at this and tell me where I'm crazy.
00:30:35
Speaker
But I think that has helped me become one of those go-to people to get things done because they know that I've put the time in.
00:30:43
Speaker
Yeah, definitely.
00:30:45
Speaker
If this was a YouTube video, you would have seen me nodding basically the entire time.
00:30:51
Speaker
And I know it's probably aggravating to staff I've had for years about
00:30:57
Speaker
Emphasizing the small things because everybody wants to do big and glamorous things, but it's like there's that concept of the aggregation of marginal gains where like 1% improvement in everything has more compounded
00:31:11
Speaker
value long-term?
00:31:13
Speaker
That's a whole genesis of this question really that you got to the heart of.
00:31:18
Speaker
I literally tell people, here's this big picture of this project.
00:31:23
Speaker
They're like, great.
00:31:24
Speaker
We're going to do this weekly program.
00:31:25
Speaker
I was like, no.
00:31:26
Speaker
You're going to do monthly at the most.
00:31:28
Speaker
We're going to start small and scale up instead of starting too big and not being able to sustain it.
00:31:34
Speaker
I couldn't agree with you more on any of that.
00:31:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:39
Speaker
So looking back at your entire career, what's an opportunity you said yes to that afterwards you wished you would have said no to?
School Board Role and Reflecting on Career Decisions
00:31:49
Speaker
I joke that it may be school board, but it really may be school board.
00:31:55
Speaker
We have a rule in our house that you cannot complain about things unless you bring potential solutions.
00:32:02
Speaker
Love that.
00:32:03
Speaker
And so we spent most of last year in distance learning.
00:32:07
Speaker
I was complaining about it at the dinner table one night and my high schooler said, well, I heard the school board member resigned.
00:32:16
Speaker
Maybe you should go up there and do something about it.
00:32:19
Speaker
And I thought this is kind of a put up or shut up moment in life, right?
00:32:24
Speaker
I can either live my truth and do what I've told my son to do, or I can say, nope, I'm busy.
00:32:30
Speaker
And I've got the COVID, you know, hotline number that calls me all the time.
00:32:35
Speaker
And I,
00:32:36
Speaker
have work and when, you know, I've got to take care of the family.
00:32:39
Speaker
But I did, I submitted an application to school board and was appointed to complete the term.
00:32:46
Speaker
And we were really, really lucky in Stillwater that the city was pretty unified in our moving forward about how we were going to handle COVID.
00:32:58
Speaker
We had a lot of people that were frustrated about school and a lot of it was trying to figure out solutions.
00:33:04
Speaker
And
00:33:05
Speaker
You know, I had people tell me it's not my job to decide public health.
00:33:09
Speaker
And that's what the school board was doing.
00:33:10
Speaker
And I said, but my job is children's education.
00:33:13
Speaker
Right.
00:33:14
Speaker
And so if I have a kid that goes to school and gets sick and then takes that home and infects their grandparents or their parents and they pass away, that child's entire education is going to be impacted by that one event.
00:33:29
Speaker
And so there is a role there.
00:33:32
Speaker
And it was a lot of time and energy during the worst parts of COVID.
00:33:36
Speaker
Now we're looking forward to what a bond looks like for our town and moving forward with that.
00:33:42
Speaker
And so I can see that there's a light at the end of the tunnel, the rough part of the tunnel.
00:33:47
Speaker
But I also could think there's a lot of nights that I spent away from my family and a lot of phone calls where I really should have probably been doing something else.
00:33:57
Speaker
But I think those things matter.
00:33:59
Speaker
And if you're going to
00:34:01
Speaker
If you're going to say that service matters to you, if you're going to claim that servant leadership is something that you value, then sometimes that takes putting some skin in the game and it's got to be painful at times.
00:34:15
Speaker
And so.
00:34:16
Speaker
Well, and now you can legitimately complain about it at home.
00:34:20
Speaker
That's right.
00:34:21
Speaker
I can say that school board's awful.
00:34:23
Speaker
I'm on it.
00:34:24
Speaker
I think my two favorite parts about that story is one, your son was...
00:34:29
Speaker
engaged enough to know that there was a vacancy on the school board.
00:34:33
Speaker
And two, that his comment about there's a vacancy, why don't you do something about it?
00:34:39
Speaker
Is I think something you've probably told me on a number of occasions, almost verbatim.
00:34:44
Speaker
So I think your son is his mother's son for sure.
00:34:49
Speaker
You know, I think that's accurate.
00:34:50
Speaker
I think if you're not going to try to fix the solution, then really what are we doing here?
00:34:57
Speaker
And so, um,
00:34:59
Speaker
I do know that I have told you more than once, JC, it's your turn.
00:35:02
Speaker
And so it comes around.
00:35:07
Speaker
That's right.
00:35:08
Speaker
We pass it on as it comes.
00:35:11
Speaker
So what about a missed opportunity?
00:35:14
Speaker
Anything you wished you would have said yes to that you passed on?
00:35:18
Speaker
You know, I think about that kind of in both the short term and the long term.
00:35:22
Speaker
I think there's been opportunities that I, at the time, I was like, I'm not going to do that.
00:35:28
Speaker
And then I went through a brief phase where I was like, man, why did I not do that?
00:35:32
Speaker
Whether it was jobs or, you know, a house that we looked at in town and we didn't put a bid on, whatever it was.
00:35:39
Speaker
But I think at the end of the day, what comes across to me is sometimes I may not have made movement because it didn't, you know, either laziness or busyness on my part or sometimes fear, you know, fear of what may be out there or fear of rejection.
00:35:57
Speaker
or fear of leaving your comfort zone.
00:35:59
Speaker
But I think after time and reflection, I really realize I'm where I need to be.
00:36:06
Speaker
And when it's time to go for whatever that is, you know, when it's time for what the next opportunity is, it's going to be very clear to me for what that looks like.
00:36:16
Speaker
And so I am not very impulsive by nature.
00:36:21
Speaker
So I can see some of them...
00:36:26
Speaker
You know, with all of my plans.
00:36:30
Speaker
There were opportunities that I kind of wanted to take on, but I also long-term look at them.
00:36:35
Speaker
I don't regret not.
00:36:37
Speaker
All right.
00:36:38
Speaker
So one of my favorite questions, what's the most ridiculous meeting you've ever sat in?
Campus Rave Misunderstanding and Professional Association Fulfillment
00:36:47
Speaker
You know, it's interesting enough because I'm pretty sure in your first podcast, you interviewed Kent Stamson and I
00:36:55
Speaker
Kent was in this meeting with me.
00:36:58
Speaker
Oh, this is great.
00:37:00
Speaker
He may not have felt like it was ridiculous, but at the time we had a building called Wentz and Wentz did a program called Wentz Days.
00:37:10
Speaker
And so every Wednesday, a different floor in the building would do an event.
00:37:15
Speaker
And some of them were very small, like, you know, let's make macrame key chains, but some of them were larger events, whatever.
00:37:23
Speaker
And one year, Wentz put out that they were going to do a rave.
00:37:29
Speaker
And some campus administrators looked at that and thought that it was going to be a mass event of destruction and wanted it shut down.
00:37:40
Speaker
And by this point, it had gained some traction on some very early social media on campus.
00:37:46
Speaker
On MySpace?
00:37:47
Speaker
Well, no, it was on Facebook, but it was on Facebook when Facebook was college only.
00:37:51
Speaker
Okay.
00:37:53
Speaker
And it was getting passed around in friend groups and really kind of caught fire in a way that I thought, well, we're not stopping this now.
00:38:02
Speaker
But in my mind, I was thinking, OK, well, a rave is just a dance.
00:38:07
Speaker
But what I realized after the fact is we got called into this meeting and an administrator was like, we got to shut this down.
00:38:13
Speaker
We got to have lots of police protection there.
00:38:15
Speaker
I've called in the city.
00:38:17
Speaker
I realized later that they were thinking of a flash mob, not a rave.
00:38:22
Speaker
But they didn't understand the vernacular enough to really know the difference at the time.
00:38:28
Speaker
And so I said, OK, I'm going to you know, they wanted lots of campus administrators there the night of to see if this was going to happen.
00:38:37
Speaker
And I made all of our grad students come and I was there and our director was out of town and we had a couple of other big things happening on campus.
00:38:45
Speaker
But I was there with all of my kids with me because I think my husband was out of town.
00:38:52
Speaker
And so there were 49 staff members that showed up and 14 students.
00:38:59
Speaker
I love that.
00:39:04
Speaker
And my oldest son, I think, was maybe six at the time.
00:39:08
Speaker
And so they passed him around.
00:39:09
Speaker
You know, he got passed in the mosh pit of the rave.
00:39:13
Speaker
But I remember thinking, we spent three hours on a meeting for 14 students to show up with some glow sticks.
00:39:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:23
Speaker
And nothing ruins a good rave more than a bunch of suits standing around.
00:39:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:30
Speaker
I love that because, I mean, that happens on every level.
00:39:32
Speaker
Like, you know, when you've got RA programs where the only people who show up are RAs and they're reporting like 14 RAs and one student.
00:39:40
Speaker
And it happens at every level.
00:39:41
Speaker
Nobody's bigger than the game.
00:39:43
Speaker
It does.
00:39:44
Speaker
And I think about that.
00:39:45
Speaker
There were some great conversations after the fact about advertising and really thinking about the context of how we share information and
00:39:56
Speaker
really understanding what our students talked about and that we need to know their language a lot.
00:40:02
Speaker
But I do remember thinking, I'm never going to get that time back.
00:40:08
Speaker
I hope your follow-up conversation with the Wynn students about marketing was how much their marketing must have sucked that only 14 people came.
00:40:15
Speaker
Well, it was only supposed to be for one floor and the floor had 36 kids on it.
00:40:21
Speaker
Yeah, those meetings, I just think about, I love calculating the opportunity costs of those meetings where if you went back and it's easier to do at public schools where salaries are available that go back and calculate everybody's hourly rate, salary rate, and then add up how much time, like how much money was spent for all these suits to sit in a meeting for three hours.
00:40:44
Speaker
Yeah, you know, and we actually decided to host another rave two years after that.
00:40:50
Speaker
And we, a phone party.
00:40:51
Speaker
It was actually a phone party rave.
00:40:53
Speaker
Oh, don't get me started on those.
00:40:56
Speaker
It was a huge event for students.
00:40:58
Speaker
They really enjoyed it, but I kept thinking, we don't have enough staff here.
00:41:05
Speaker
Got to call in the reinforcements.
00:41:07
Speaker
That's right.
00:41:08
Speaker
All right, let's move on to some Swakua involvement stuff.
00:41:12
Speaker
And that kind of has been alluded to a little bit.
00:41:14
Speaker
Really, it is your fault that this podcast exists because I remember one conference where after the day's sessions had ended, I was sneaking away to avoid the committee fair and I made the mistake of running into you.
00:41:28
Speaker
And as I recall, you physically grabbed my arm and forced me to go to the research committee meeting.
00:41:35
Speaker
And well, that one thing led to another, which led to another.
00:41:38
Speaker
And here we are.
00:41:40
Speaker
I guess the listeners can write in and say thank you.
00:41:44
Speaker
You know, I think that's one of our goals is we have a job to do, right?
00:41:49
Speaker
But we also have a responsibility to the profession to continue to pull up and engage younger professionals.
00:41:58
Speaker
And that's one of my favorite things about
00:42:02
Speaker
SWACUHO is it does have kind of a smaller family feel than some of the other bigger conferences.
00:42:08
Speaker
But I think it's an opportunity where, you know, you can have a conversation with someone in a session and then see them later in the hallway and say, hey, have you met my friend Diane?
00:42:18
Speaker
Or hey, have you, do you know Tiffany?
00:42:21
Speaker
Or whatever you think that is.
00:42:22
Speaker
And those relationships develop into some of the most fulfilling professional and personal relationships that
00:42:30
Speaker
you know, in your life.
00:42:32
Speaker
And so, yes, if you want to blame me for this, go right ahead because I do not regret any point of it because I think not only did it help you professionally, but I think it helps our profession.
00:42:45
Speaker
You know, your contributions, they matter.
00:42:47
Speaker
Oh, well, thank you.
00:42:50
Speaker
I'm certainly not mad at you, but Andrea, my wife, she might be writing some hate mail because I'm not home with her tonight.
00:42:57
Speaker
Tell her she can put it in next year's Christmas card.
00:42:59
Speaker
Well, spoiler alert, it is in this one.
00:43:05
Speaker
You mentioned fulfillment.
00:43:06
Speaker
And so I remember talking to you once and you told me like higher level of involvement in a regional association can provide fulfillment that you can't get in your day-to-day job.
00:43:17
Speaker
Do you remember that conversation?
00:43:20
Speaker
Vaguely.
00:43:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:24
Speaker
Did I have an adult beverage in my hand when we had it?
00:43:27
Speaker
It's possible, but I don't recall explicitly.
00:43:31
Speaker
But is that something that is true?
00:43:34
Speaker
I do think that's something that's true.
00:43:35
Speaker
I have a peer group that is often called the triplets.
00:43:39
Speaker
Lee Senior from Southwest nicknamed us that a long time ago.
00:43:45
Speaker
But I think about these are two women that I have never worked on the same campus with.
00:43:50
Speaker
I didn't go to grad school with them.
00:43:52
Speaker
But
00:43:54
Speaker
We connected professionally and then they became sounding boards and lots of different things.
00:43:59
Speaker
But they also became vacation buddies and people to really go to to be your cheerleaders and things.
00:44:07
Speaker
And so I think that's one way that you get those pieces of fulfillment.
00:44:10
Speaker
You develop those personal connections where you're traveling through that town and you get to stop and have a meal with that person.
00:44:18
Speaker
Or, you know, I like to take my kids to every college campus that we meet.
00:44:22
Speaker
come near.
00:44:23
Speaker
And so, you know, if we're on a college campus, I'm going to say, hey, can I stop in and see you?
00:44:28
Speaker
Or we're going to be coming through.
00:44:31
Speaker
But knowing and watching their lives develop and them seeing my life develop, I think that just kind of, it's the family aspect.
00:44:44
Speaker
And a lot of us
00:44:45
Speaker
have a family of origin, but a lot of us have professional families.
00:44:49
Speaker
And I think that that kind of relationship helps.
00:44:53
Speaker
But I also think knowing, you know, when COVID happened, I remember watching and connecting with peers at other Big 12 institutions and other SWACUO institutions about, hey, what are you thinking here?
00:45:05
Speaker
And is it working?
00:45:07
Speaker
And, you know, here's what I'm thinking and I'm not sure.
00:45:11
Speaker
And that type of support network
00:45:14
Speaker
On top of the friendships and connecting younger professionals into the greater profession, I think that that is fulfillment that you don't always get in your eight to five, got to get through your inbox grind.
00:45:31
Speaker
I say eight to five, knowing that no one in rest life works eight to five.
00:45:36
Speaker
In the day-to-day operations, those conversations and those relationships are
00:45:42
Speaker
give you passion and joy that you don't always have.
00:45:46
Speaker
Well, I've thought about this a whole lot over the last two years.
00:45:51
Speaker
And as people talking about feeling burnout due to the pandemic and housing and all that, is that one of the... And burnout is something I've studied quite a bit.
00:46:01
Speaker
And one of the key aspects of burnout is not feeling a sense of personal accomplishment, which is totally understandable in the last two years because people were delivering meals and we weren't doing programs and all the things in their job description nobody was doing.
00:46:16
Speaker
And so there was kind of that lack of personal accomplishment.
00:46:19
Speaker
And I've always felt that the fulfillment in the associations also comes from like, here's another way to feel a sense of personal accomplishment.
00:46:29
Speaker
And even better, it's not directly related to my boss.
00:46:32
Speaker
And it's something I don't have to report to or about.
00:46:36
Speaker
And it's just an additional contribution that is kind of on my own terms or their own terms, as it may be.
00:46:42
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I agree.
00:46:44
Speaker
I think...
00:46:46
Speaker
But it's a balance.
00:46:47
Speaker
I really struggled when we were going through COVID of how to balance what my family needed and their safety with what my students needed and their safety and what I wanted to accomplish professionally.
00:47:01
Speaker
And I did.
00:47:02
Speaker
I made the decision to step down from a Kuhoi programming committee because we, like many campuses, we're short-staffed.
00:47:10
Speaker
Our budgets are really struggling.
00:47:13
Speaker
And I felt like my campus needed me at that time professionally.
00:47:17
Speaker
So I needed to be there for them, knowing that, you know, those opportunities aren't going to disappear.
00:47:24
Speaker
I just may have to delay them for a while.
00:47:27
Speaker
But I think that the fulfillment of knowing you've supported your team and that you've made it through a really rough patch.
00:47:36
Speaker
You know, we all we do a secret Santa at the end of every fall semester.
00:47:41
Speaker
And we were sitting around having breakfast the other day and I thought, I love you jokers.
00:47:46
Speaker
I mean, you're all so different.
00:47:49
Speaker
There's been a lot of changes on our team.
00:47:52
Speaker
But I think knowing that if I had to choose who to go into a battle with, that's going to be the group that I'm going to battle with.
00:48:01
Speaker
Yeah, definitely.
00:48:03
Speaker
On episode one, Kent Sampson and I talked about the timing and conditions being right to take on such roles like the president of SWACUHO.
Journey to Swakuho Presidency and Leadership Challenges
00:48:13
Speaker
You were president in 2016 and 2017.
00:48:17
Speaker
What made it your time or your turn, as you said earlier, to be president?
00:48:23
Speaker
You know, when you talked earlier about what was the opportunity that you maybe should have said no to or
00:48:30
Speaker
you think through that.
00:48:32
Speaker
I almost thought about Suikuhu presidency as part of that.
00:48:35
Speaker
I had been involved when I was in UMR, moved here to start a position in January.
00:48:42
Speaker
I was a mid-year hire.
00:48:43
Speaker
And Kevin Solomon from Arkansas Tech was the time and place chair at the time.
00:48:49
Speaker
And he called and said, hey, I want to get you plugged in.
00:48:53
Speaker
And he was an OSU alum.
00:48:55
Speaker
And so much like JC, I did to you,
00:48:58
Speaker
He kind of drug me kicking and screaming to a committee meeting.
00:49:02
Speaker
And I really enjoyed those experiences.
00:49:04
Speaker
You know, a lot of that is logistics, but a lot of it is relationships.
00:49:08
Speaker
And so I started out time and place, served on a host committee that my institution was hosting, you know, a year later, and then got asked to run for secretary and thought, okay, you know what?
00:49:24
Speaker
Sure, let's do this.
00:49:25
Speaker
And I think when...
00:49:28
Speaker
I was going to run for president.
00:49:30
Speaker
My husband got sick with an autoimmune disease that we had not known even existed prior to that.
00:49:38
Speaker
And so going through, it was actually the 2016 coming home from that conference where he first started exhibiting symptoms.
00:49:46
Speaker
And I thought a lot to myself of, I don't know that I am in the right spot.
00:49:53
Speaker
And how do I support him?
00:49:54
Speaker
And how do I support myself?
00:49:56
Speaker
And how do we get through this?
00:49:58
Speaker
That's subsequently when we were also implementing Banner on our campus.
00:50:04
Speaker
But what I realized is, God, those friendships, that peer support, that got me through it.
00:50:12
Speaker
You know, notes from friends in SWACUHO that would reach out and say, hey, how are things going?
00:50:18
Speaker
Knowing that
00:50:19
Speaker
that once a month committee meeting was going to have some laughter and joy in it when lots of other things were bad.
00:50:27
Speaker
My faith is very near and dear to me.
00:50:29
Speaker
And I think that's where I think God puts you where you need to be, no matter what you think.
00:50:36
Speaker
And so that's where I realized that those plans are greater than anything we choose to do on our own.
00:50:44
Speaker
And so I think that path to the presidency is
00:50:48
Speaker
Was not necessarily, I'm going to take this and this is where I'm going to go and this is my next step.
00:50:54
Speaker
It was more where I see small things that just aligned in the perfect way to push me forward when I don't know that I was necessarily cognizant of taking those steps myself.
00:51:08
Speaker
Yeah, definitely.
00:51:09
Speaker
It's like windows of opportunity come and go.
00:51:12
Speaker
And as quickly as they open, so do they close.
00:51:15
Speaker
And sometimes people push you through windows.
00:51:18
Speaker
Sometimes you rip the windows open yourself and jump through.
00:51:22
Speaker
And sometimes you just happen to fall into them.
00:51:24
Speaker
And I just think that the pathways is just so fascinating to think about.
00:51:29
Speaker
Because as I told Katie Pelton after last year's conference, and I rolled off of the secretary role, it's like,
00:51:36
Speaker
There's always something somewhere that someone can do.
00:51:41
Speaker
And I think I've found my involvement is mostly just identifying little things here and there that either nobody else said yes to or nobody, everybody else was quiet.
00:51:51
Speaker
And it's just, it's kind of neat to see those pathways.
00:51:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:55
Speaker
You know, I think that goes back to that niche conversation of, yeah, you solve the need and you can't fix everything, but Hey, I can fix this one little thing.
00:52:05
Speaker
And,
00:52:07
Speaker
Somewhere.
00:52:08
Speaker
Sometimes I think that's where true service gets started.
00:52:11
Speaker
Do you remember what the platform you ran on was?
00:52:15
Speaker
I do not.
00:52:16
Speaker
You know, it seems like I should know those things.
00:52:19
Speaker
I'm going to blame it on COVID that I don't remember.
00:52:24
Speaker
I'm trying to think, what would that have been?
00:52:27
Speaker
I really, it might've been family because I really do.
00:52:31
Speaker
And I know I've mentioned that several times, but, but when I think of SWACUHO,
00:52:36
Speaker
the warm, fuzzy family feeling of it, that's what sticks out to me.
00:52:43
Speaker
Yeah, definitely.
00:52:43
Speaker
And I'm definitely not someone who is like outwardly emotes in any sort of like way.
00:52:48
Speaker
But I remember when my wife had just finished school, I had finished school, we were considering moving back to the Midwest.
00:52:57
Speaker
One of the things, the biggest drivers of keeping me here was I just didn't want to leave the Swakuho region and the people and that family that you've talked about.
00:53:05
Speaker
You'll talk about my failure as a supervisor.
00:53:09
Speaker
Yeah, we'll come back.
00:53:11
Speaker
Where was that one?
00:53:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:14
Speaker
I got a little out of order here.
00:53:15
Speaker
That's okay.
00:53:17
Speaker
This is your show, JC.
00:53:18
Speaker
We're just living in it.
00:53:19
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:53:20
Speaker
I'm going to put that quote on the marketing materials.
00:53:24
Speaker
What is your favorite failure in your career?
00:53:27
Speaker
Like something you learned a lot from, but later set you up for success.
00:53:32
Speaker
I definitely would say my first year as a full-time supervisor, I was a failure.
00:53:37
Speaker
And I think I was hired to work in an all-male building at Kansas State University.
00:53:42
Speaker
I don't know if Derek is the smartest man I have ever met or the luckiest, knowing that it was going to work out in the end.
00:53:51
Speaker
But hired to work in an all-male building, but a building where the staff carried some baggage.
00:53:57
Speaker
They had a lot of baggage from the year before.
00:54:01
Speaker
They had some trust issues.
00:54:03
Speaker
And then you hire a female supervisor into an all-male building.
00:54:08
Speaker
And then three weeks in, I find out that we need to convert four wings of that building to female and that I am going to have to remove some staff from this all-returner team and hire some females in to take their place.
00:54:27
Speaker
And so I felt like
00:54:29
Speaker
I was kind of set up that knowing that there was going to be some big challenges, right?
00:54:34
Speaker
But I committed early on that I was going to win that staff over.
00:54:39
Speaker
And I don't know that I did that.
00:54:41
Speaker
At the time, I felt like I was like, whatever you need.
00:54:45
Speaker
You want to come by at 10 o'clock at night and ask a question?
00:54:48
Speaker
Knock on the door.
00:54:49
Speaker
Sure.
00:54:50
Speaker
You didn't get dinner and the dining hall's closed.
00:54:53
Speaker
There's always leftovers in my fridge.
00:54:55
Speaker
Whatever they needed, I wanted to make sure that staff
00:54:59
Speaker
felt like they had a supervisor that was there for them.
00:55:03
Speaker
And that's kind of how I started the year.
00:55:05
Speaker
And, you know, working with guys is sometimes different.
00:55:10
Speaker
That staff had a ton of potty humor and I was not a potty humor fan, but I learned to love it.
00:55:16
Speaker
But about midway through, I remember laying in bed after four or five phone calls after midnight thinking, oh,
00:55:24
Speaker
I have failed.
00:55:25
Speaker
I have not equipped these staff members to be good decision makers.
00:55:29
Speaker
I have not demonstrated balance for them.
00:55:34
Speaker
I have not committed time and space for my marriage, you know, that I should, because I'm always working.
00:55:41
Speaker
I should not be in this profession.
00:55:43
Speaker
And it was really kind of a eye opening couple of days for me thinking, what am I doing here?
00:55:49
Speaker
And I went to my staff team,
00:55:52
Speaker
Cause we met at 11 o'clock on Tuesday nights for two hours.
00:55:57
Speaker
Cause that was when it was convenient.
00:56:01
Speaker
Right.
00:56:04
Speaker
And I told them, I said, I'm sorry.
00:56:07
Speaker
I suck.
00:56:07
Speaker
I'm not done y'all a good service.
00:56:10
Speaker
And what kind of came out of that conversation was they didn't call because they didn't know how to make the decisions.
00:56:19
Speaker
I think they just enjoyed the conversation and enjoyed being part of the group when we would go deal with it.
00:56:25
Speaker
Because I told them, if you don't feel comfortable, I will always back you up.
00:56:29
Speaker
I will always come with you.
00:56:31
Speaker
We can have conversations together.
00:56:32
Speaker
I will walk your rounds with you if that's what you want.
00:56:36
Speaker
But I think where I felt like a failure, what I learned is they felt like they trusted me and they felt like I was on their team.
00:56:47
Speaker
And we...
00:56:49
Speaker
One hall of the year that year.
00:56:51
Speaker
Sometimes I think we drug the hall kicking and screaming to hall of the year.
00:56:56
Speaker
But what I saw as a semester of failure, they saw as a semester of success.
00:57:02
Speaker
And I think it really challenged me to think about, we talk in terms of structure and balance and critical thinking skills, but our students think more in terms of support,
00:57:18
Speaker
and connection, and fun in lots of ways.
00:57:22
Speaker
And so when I think back of that year, now I think of it as one of my best years professionally.
00:57:28
Speaker
You know, I grew a lot as a supervisor.
00:57:32
Speaker
I think when one of my staff members needed his back waxed before he was going to spring break.
00:57:42
Speaker
And my supervisor walked in while I was wiping the, pulling the lights out.
00:57:49
Speaker
I was like, what are you doing?
00:57:52
Speaker
And I remember thinking it's what they needed.
00:57:55
Speaker
You know, my, my job is to give them what they need and it may not be comfortable for me, but I think as a supervisor, a lot of times we fall into the trap of thinking, I'm going to tell them to do what I want and how I want it.
00:58:13
Speaker
And I expect them to meet my needs.
00:58:15
Speaker
But yeah,
00:58:16
Speaker
I really think part of supervision and being a good supervisor is knowing your staff team and knowing how to meet their needs, which requires more adaptability on your part.
00:58:29
Speaker
But I also think as a supervisor, you have more flexibility to be adaptable, right?
00:58:34
Speaker
You have more experience.
00:58:36
Speaker
You've been longer in the profession.
00:58:39
Speaker
You've seen more staff and worked with more staff.
00:58:42
Speaker
So there are times where
00:58:44
Speaker
this is the way it's going to be.
00:58:46
Speaker
And this is what we're doing.
00:58:47
Speaker
But there are lots of times where if you have the flexibility, choose to learn and listen from your staff, because I think that's where you really kind of grow and learn some of those lessons.
00:58:59
Speaker
So I don't know.
00:59:01
Speaker
I look back on that year and I helped two staff members by engagement rings.
00:59:07
Speaker
I shaved someone's back.
00:59:10
Speaker
I
00:59:11
Speaker
I did lots of laundry.
00:59:12
Speaker
I told them, I said, I want you to know your residents and I will do whatever it takes for you to know your residents.
00:59:18
Speaker
So we would do roster quizzes.
00:59:20
Speaker
And if they got above 90%, I would do three loads of their laundry, you know, because that's what they needed.
00:59:28
Speaker
But they committed to buying into that and they committed to knowing their students and really taught me a lot about how people are
00:59:39
Speaker
coming from all walks of life when they get to college, right?
00:59:42
Speaker
And so our job is to really find what the need is and meet them where they're at, not necessarily say, my office hours are eight to five, make an appointment, because that's not always convenient for them.
00:59:57
Speaker
Clearly with an 11 o'clock staff meeting.
01:00:01
Speaker
You know, I won't do that again.
01:00:04
Speaker
Jeez.
01:00:04
Speaker
And I've always loved hearing that story.
01:00:07
Speaker
And I think it's an extreme example of a challenge is a lot of new professionals face in terms of like that availability and wanting to be there and all that.
01:00:19
Speaker
And I think the story resonates a lot for me because I knew all of them.
01:00:24
Speaker
And yes, they were all great.
01:00:27
Speaker
And like a very rowdy bunch when Haymaker Hall walked in, like it was like,
01:00:32
Speaker
a party and it just was like, they were just such a good group.
01:00:37
Speaker
And I don't think you were a failure, but I could see how you might've felt like one in the moment, but.
01:00:42
Speaker
But, you know, I think looking back on that, I think that's a really big challenge to, yes, there is a balance to all of it.
01:00:50
Speaker
Our staff should be very diligent in creating boundaries for their own personal wellbeing and role modeling that efficiently.
01:00:58
Speaker
But I think it's also knowing when to give and take.
01:01:01
Speaker
with your staff teams and, you know, knowing how to be very self-individualized in your supervision.
01:01:09
Speaker
As we look to wrap up here, just a kind of few miscellaneous questions for you.
Book Recommendations and Personal Insights
01:01:16
Speaker
Okay.
01:01:17
Speaker
What's a book you most frequently share with others?
01:01:21
Speaker
Ooh, um, nonfiction.
01:01:25
Speaker
I would say start with why Simon Sinek, start with why.
01:01:29
Speaker
Context is not one of my top things, but I think if you don't understand the why, then you don't necessarily buy in to the what.
01:01:38
Speaker
So professionally, I would say start with why.
01:01:42
Speaker
He has a great TED talk about that also.
01:01:44
Speaker
Yes, but I don't recommend the TED talk because if you watch the TED talk, you don't read the book.
01:01:50
Speaker
And the book gives nuances that you're not going to get in the TED.
01:01:56
Speaker
Yep.
01:01:56
Speaker
I also will always recommend Lotsam Dove.
01:01:59
Speaker
It has been my favorite book almost my entire life.
01:02:02
Speaker
I think I read it in seventh grade.
01:02:05
Speaker
And I think when I think of great American literature, that is the one.
01:02:11
Speaker
Anyone I've ever met that has read Lonesome Dove has probably read it a hundred times.
01:02:16
Speaker
I've never met anyone that's only read it once.
01:02:19
Speaker
We have, I think, four or five copies at our house.
01:02:23
Speaker
I have one of them that is annotated about
01:02:26
Speaker
things that should have been answered in the other books in the series that weren't.
01:02:34
Speaker
I was hoping you were going to say you had four or five because of the Massey Family Book Club.
01:02:39
Speaker
Well, you know, I think my husband and son have read that book several times as well.
01:02:44
Speaker
So it is definitely a well-loved book at my house.
01:02:48
Speaker
But I also think
01:02:50
Speaker
You know, I'm a book lover that will reread things.
01:02:53
Speaker
I reread Bridge to Terabithia every August.
01:02:57
Speaker
And my staff will tell you, I tell them this at the beginning of training, people trust us with their children.
01:03:02
Speaker
And we have to be worthy of that trust.
01:03:04
Speaker
And I think about, have you read that book?
01:03:07
Speaker
No, I haven't.
01:03:09
Speaker
You should read.
01:03:09
Speaker
It's a young adult book or children's lit, really.
01:03:12
Speaker
It's probably fourth grade reading level.
01:03:14
Speaker
I'm ordering it right now.
01:03:15
Speaker
Okay.
01:03:15
Speaker
Okay.
01:03:16
Speaker
So don't watch the movie.
01:03:17
Speaker
The movie is much more fantasy driven, but in the book, there is a boy who doesn't feel heard in his family and a neighbor moves in and this neighbor is very much different from them.
01:03:31
Speaker
I mean, she, her parents don't have the same rules.
01:03:34
Speaker
They don't own a TV.
01:03:37
Speaker
Life is about more than work.
01:03:38
Speaker
So it's a very different picture than what he sees in his own personal life.
01:03:43
Speaker
But
01:03:44
Speaker
like a lot of our students, he feels very unheard and misunderstood.
01:03:49
Speaker
And he goes to school and at school, the competition is all about who's the fastest runner and who can succeed on the playground.
01:04:00
Speaker
But he has a music teacher that is committed and invested in
01:04:05
Speaker
all of the students and notices his talent as an artist.
01:04:10
Speaker
And I think about if all of our students had a teacher or a person at college that invested in them the way that the music teacher invest in this student, they would all be successful.
01:04:24
Speaker
And that person is kind of the glue that holds him together when the book hits its crisis point.
01:04:32
Speaker
And I think about
01:04:35
Speaker
especially now when we think about mental health and all of the things, that's what all of us need.
01:04:40
Speaker
We need a person to be our lodestone that will ground us when things get rough.
01:04:45
Speaker
So read that.
01:04:46
Speaker
I read it every year.
01:04:50
Speaker
Ordering it right now.
01:04:51
Speaker
You've sold me.
01:04:52
Speaker
I try through all of it every year.
01:04:56
Speaker
Ordering it right now and we'll bring you back for a book club episode on Bridge to Territia.
01:05:02
Speaker
Okay.
01:05:04
Speaker
All right.
01:05:04
Speaker
My understanding is you started a secret society while at K-State, but unfortunately it didn't stay secret very long when one of your induction ceremonies went awry.
Comical Induction Incident and Daughter's Cookie Request
01:05:18
Speaker
What happened?
01:05:25
Speaker
Oh, Dr. Derek Jackson probably has lots of gray hairs with my name on them.
01:05:33
Speaker
Um, we read a book in our team that talked about make work fun.
01:05:40
Speaker
And that became a joke of how do we make things fun?
01:05:44
Speaker
And so we did.
01:05:46
Speaker
We decided that we were going to make a secret society.
01:05:50
Speaker
And the way that we did that is we decided we were going to do the induction in his backyard when he was supposed to be gone for the weekend.
01:06:01
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And he happened to come home in the middle of it.
01:06:06
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And I'll never forget, he stepped outside and I looked up and I thought, oh, this is going to go bad.
01:06:13
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He waved me over and I walked over and he said, what are you doing?
01:06:20
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And I said, making work fun.
01:06:22
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:27
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So we never inducted anyone after that, but we invited him to our celebration.
01:06:35
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But I think part of it is, you know, a lot of us get into housing as a profession because we like people or we're good at programming and the fun is what gets us there.
01:06:48
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But as you move up, the liability and the
01:06:53
Speaker
the administration becomes the greater weight of your responsibilities, right?
01:06:59
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And so I think about that book is very correct that you have to make your own fun, right?
01:07:05
Speaker
You have to find something to laugh about every day or work's going to become a burden and not a joy.
01:07:13
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And so, you know, finding with your coworkers what you can laugh about or, you know, celebrating the mullet in your staff meeting, whatever that is,
01:07:23
Speaker
But work is sometimes heavy.
01:07:27
Speaker
If you're dealing with major facilities issues or COVID or a sexual assault or the death of a student, those things carry some secondary trauma for a lot of staff members.
01:07:42
Speaker
And knowing that, one, if you're dealing with that, there's resources that you should be engaging in.
01:07:48
Speaker
But two,
01:07:49
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You also have to think about what's the joy in your job and how do you find your joy?
01:07:54
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So I found my joy in my secret society that is defunct.
01:07:58
Speaker
I'm assuming it's defunct.
01:08:01
Speaker
There may be another one there.
01:08:03
Speaker
I haven't checked.
01:08:06
Speaker
My favorite part of that story that you've shared is imagining you in Derek Jackson's backyard and on the fly just saying,
01:08:16
Speaker
Making work fun?
01:08:19
Speaker
Well, and we were all wearing our master's robes.
01:08:26
Speaker
I think I was carrying a jar of grape jelly.
01:08:30
Speaker
I don't really know.
01:08:32
Speaker
I probably would look at it now as an administrator and think, that's hazing.
01:08:36
Speaker
What were we doing?
01:08:37
Speaker
Yeah.
01:08:40
Speaker
At the time, I think it was really like, how do we just find laughter in the mundane, everyday things?
01:08:47
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Well, and props to Derek Jackson for not losing his head about the liability and all that.
01:08:54
Speaker
No, you know, I think really, I think of Derek as a second dad.
01:08:59
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He has always been even keeled and put up with my, you know, is this a,
01:09:06
Speaker
is this a hill to die on or is this a, I need to calm down or is this a, I'm on the right track, but I need to think about it different ways.
01:09:14
Speaker
But I think when I think about mentors in the profession, he will forever be one that really kind of puts us on solid footing with very level-headed, honest, careful decision-making.
01:09:27
Speaker
And he was a great first boss for me in that way.
01:09:32
Speaker
Yeah, I love Derek.
01:09:33
Speaker
I stormed his office once as a student before I was an RA about how I felt I'd been wronged in the early room preferencing process.
01:09:42
Speaker
Oh, did you have a dirty erping situation?
01:09:45
Speaker
I may have been.
01:09:47
Speaker
I wouldn't have called it that.
01:09:48
Speaker
I think I had exposed some logistical flaws in the preferencing order that may have given me advantage that Derek promptly took away from me.
01:09:57
Speaker
Oh.
01:09:59
Speaker
So you were taking advantage of the system and then were held accountable for it.
01:10:04
Speaker
No, I was abiding by all the policies and procedures put forth.
01:10:08
Speaker
And Derek was the person who didn't allow me to have a single room my junior year.
01:10:14
Speaker
Ah, semantics.
01:10:15
Speaker
But then I got hired as an RA in August that year.
01:10:18
Speaker
Yeah, there you go.
01:10:20
Speaker
Yeah.
01:10:22
Speaker
My last question for you is, is it true that
01:10:26
Speaker
That one of your children stole a cookie from Reed Drummond's husband.
01:10:32
Speaker
How did you know this?
01:10:34
Speaker
I do my background research.
01:10:37
Speaker
It is accurate that I had met some professional colleagues at Reed Drummond's store in Paul Huska, Oklahoma.
01:10:47
Speaker
And I did have my youngest daughter with me.
01:10:50
Speaker
And she is very, very independent.
01:10:55
Speaker
And one day she is going to grow up to be a phenomenal adult who is very, very confident about what she wants in life.
01:11:03
Speaker
But I just want her to be quiet and eat her dinner sometimes.
01:11:09
Speaker
And we had shopped and we're going to eat lunch.
01:11:13
Speaker
And have you ever been to the Pioneer Woman's?
01:11:17
Speaker
I've watched the show, but not been to the restaurant.
01:11:19
Speaker
Okay.
01:11:20
Speaker
So Paul Huska is a tiny little town of about 3,000 residents.
01:11:24
Speaker
but especially during that timeframe was getting about 13,000 visitors a day for this one store.
01:11:31
Speaker
And so it created a lot of downtown revitalization, but it also created, you know, some subsequent traffic issues and policing issues and parking and some other things that are attached to that.
01:11:45
Speaker
And I think that the Drummond family did a really good job of trying to support that
01:11:51
Speaker
in multiple ways.
01:11:52
Speaker
And you saw lots of businesses pop up around the mercantile.
01:11:57
Speaker
And so we were there with friends and visiting.
01:11:58
Speaker
But typically, if you want to eat lunch, you need to be in line by 930, because it's going to take a while, especially if you're in a larger group.
01:12:07
Speaker
And so we were in line and a group had decided to go up and look around.
01:12:13
Speaker
And the family brings out cookies that are they have a bakery upstairs.
01:12:18
Speaker
And so they
01:12:19
Speaker
if cookies are broken when they're putting them on trays, they'll break them up into smaller pieces and they'll walk the line.
01:12:24
Speaker
And they spend a lot of time really kind of connecting with guests while they're there.
01:12:29
Speaker
And Lad Drummond offered my youngest daughter a cookie and it was not the cookie she wanted.
01:12:36
Speaker
And she demanded that he go back in the kitchen and get her a chocolate chip cookie because she did not want sugar cookies.
01:12:44
Speaker
And she may have been six at the time, but he...
01:12:48
Speaker
turned around and went and got her a cookie.
01:12:55
Speaker
So if we all had that confidence and directness in life, life would probably be easier.
01:13:04
Speaker
But when I got the text message of what she had done, I was shocked.
01:13:10
Speaker
All right, Tanya, any closing thoughts?
01:13:14
Speaker
I don't even know where to go from here.
01:13:17
Speaker
You know, I think here's what I would tell people.
01:13:21
Speaker
There are lots of opportunities out there.
01:13:25
Speaker
Think about where you can make the difference for people.
01:13:28
Speaker
And not every opportunity is always going to feel great.
01:13:32
Speaker
But I think there's value in everything that you do.
01:13:35
Speaker
And so like this podcast, I think, you know, it may not seem when I told my kids I was going to be on a podcast, they were like, Oh, is it on Spotify?
01:13:44
Speaker
And I'm like, Oh,
01:13:46
Speaker
No, it definitely is.
01:13:48
Speaker
Okay.
01:13:48
Speaker
Well, they don't think that I'm famous, even though I'm on TV once a month.
01:13:53
Speaker
They don't think that that's cool.
01:13:54
Speaker
What I would say is take those chances.
01:13:58
Speaker
Look for those new things.
01:14:00
Speaker
You never know what's going to happen.
01:14:02
Speaker
You might later on develop a podcast because I drug you to a committee meeting.
01:14:08
Speaker
Yes, we are definitely on Spotify and on all major podcast apps, Tanya.
01:14:13
Speaker
Hey, well, that is good to know.
01:14:15
Speaker
I just watch you off or listen to you off of this Wakuho post on Facebook, but I'm old school.
01:14:22
Speaker
Nice.
01:14:24
Speaker
All right.
01:14:25
Speaker
Well, that's a wrap for today's episode.
01:14:27
Speaker
Thanks yet again to past president Tanya Massey for coming on the show.
01:14:31
Speaker
This episode was a ton of fun, and I know Tanya's stories and experiences will resonate with a lot of our regional housing folks.
01:14:38
Speaker
And Craig Van Blercombe.
01:14:40
Speaker
Be sure to reach out to Tanya on her preferred social media platform listed in the show notes and thank her for volunteering yet again for the benefit of our region.
01:14:49
Speaker
Trust me, Tanya is a very special person you definitely want in your orbit.
01:14:54
Speaker
If you ever get a chance to work for Tanya, you take it.
01:14:57
Speaker
As I mentioned at the top of the episode, I've been contacted a few times by listeners already.
01:15:02
Speaker
I love getting feedback, but also want to start highlighting people who put something they heard on the podcast into action.
01:15:09
Speaker
Please email me at swakuhopodcast at gmail.com if you have any examples of stuff you've put into action or ways you've tried something new.
01:15:17
Speaker
Be sure to include the episode you listened to, what you did, and what the outcome was.
01:15:21
Speaker
If you don't want your name shared on the air, that's fine too.
01:15:24
Speaker
Just let me know.
01:15:25
Speaker
Don't forget the podcast has an advice feature where you can write in and ask for professional advice.
01:15:31
Speaker
A link to submit your questions is in the show notes.
01:15:34
Speaker
I anticipate airing responses to inquiries we received in the next block of episodes.
01:15:39
Speaker
Tanya talked about volunteering, and I'm now looking for volunteers to help out with scaling and elevating the podcast.
01:15:47
Speaker
It's certainly been fun running this thing beholden to no one, but it's time to get others involved.
01:15:52
Speaker
Specifically, I'm looking for people to write reflection guides, recruit and solicit guests, develop topic outlines, and even edit episode tracks.
01:16:01
Speaker
It isn't glamorous work, but it is important work.
01:16:05
Speaker
And if there's one thing I've learned about professionally growing in the field of student housing, it's that the best skill development with the most long-term benefits comes from doing the gopher tasks well and honing the fundamentals.
01:16:18
Speaker
Take it from me, you need absolutely zero experience to get involved in this podcast since guess what?
01:16:25
Speaker
I had zero experience when this whole ordeal started.
01:16:28
Speaker
Our next episode is our second feature topic, and it's going to be a lively one because we will be discussing student staff accountability.
01:16:36
Speaker
I'll be joined by Alana St.
01:16:37
Speaker
Cyr from the University of Central Arkansas, Victor Salazar from Our Lady of the Lake University, and Jason Titus from Texas Christian University.
01:16:46
Speaker
And no student staff accountability topic is off limits.
01:16:49
Speaker
I'm going to be holding our guests accountable for their performance and issuing demerits left and right if they fail to meet your expectations.
01:16:56
Speaker
So make sure not to miss it.
01:16:59
Speaker
And with that, I say to you, good day.