Giving Thanks.

I meant to write this post earlier in the day, but due to time constraints…you’re getting a Thanksgiving post after the bird has been devoured and the tradition of holiday gluttony has been continued.  I have so much to be thankful for this year:

- my friends and family who have shaped me into the person that I am today, for better or for worse.

- the men and women serving this country abroad and domestically.  May God protect you every day.

- ARod’s decision to hit in the clutch this postseason.  27 rings baby!

- the opportunity to sit next to my three and five year-old cousins at dinner tonight, and to be reminded what it’s like to have a child’s heart.

- the comfort I feel when I’m home and have my dog sleeping on my legs.

- the opportunity to travel throughout the country to not only meet and recruit the nation’s future, but also to discover the beauty that exists in the middle-of-nowhere Vermont as well as the Boston Commons and Central Park.

The list could truly go on and on, but I hope that I’ve given those that I encounter on either a daily basis or once in their lifetime something for which to be thankful.

Now…about that turkey sandwich for tomorrow…

Legal

Just a little gem from today to close out the workweek.  Not really, I suppose, since I have an event on campus tomorrow.  Ah, the beauty of being salaried.

At a dinner tonight for this event for admitted students, I was talking with three girls about the campus and how they like it so far.  One of them told me that yesterday was the birthday of the girl sitting next to her.  I told her happy birthday and said, “So that must be the big 18, right?,” knowing that most of the applicants we get are 17 or so.

Her response: “Yeah, 18 and legal!”

Wow.

Brother.

I have a younger brother who’s going through the college process right now.  He’s submitted almost all of his applications (with the help of my dad) and has already heard back from one of the schools lower down on the food chain.  He was accepted, but it hasn’t done much to ease his nervousness or that of my parents.

As much as one would expect me to be taking an active part in his search, I’ve felt perpetually disconnected, and I’m not sure it’s my own fault.  Every time I go home, which is often, I’ll sit down and talk to him about the schools: why he wants to apply, what he likes, how he’ll adjust to being away from home.  His answers never seem enough for me, and he starts the teenager attitude, which dissipates the conversation pretty quickly.  I’m not sure how my dad has dealt with it so well, but at least the applications are in.

I think one of the most difficult thing that continually pops up is the fact that I still see my 17 year-old brother (who is a good five inches taller than me) as a little kid.  When I say “little,” I mean along the lines of three to five years old.  It’s like he completely skipped the majority of adolescence in my eyes, and now he’s getting ready to be living in a dorm room, potentially far from home.  I’m not sure I’m ready for that.

Each day, I work with mommy and daddy’s precious little boy or girl, trying to get them to pay the school enough to buy a luxury car every year (and then some), and can do it without a second thought.  When it comes to my own brother, I get upset about the politics behind this profession, about the tricks that are pulled to unfairly recruit students.  I’d love for them to benefit him, but he just won’t fall into that category.  He’s a middle-of-the-road kid…he works hard in the classroom, plays a sport, is well-liked, tested poorly…not much to really make him stand out.

I’m just hoping that, wherever he ends up, he knows that he has a brother that is proud of what he’s done and is willing to give advice…as long as he knocks off that shitty attitude.

Wonder What’s Next

Some of the best students that I encounter on this job are those know exactly what they want from life and how they’re going to get there.  They’re going to major in this subject, take those classes, get involved with these clubs, and go on to get a job in that city.  At the same time, some of the most refreshing interviews I have are with students who have little direction and are willing to take their four years of college as they come.  Put both of these types of students together on a campus, and you have a pretty dynamic student body…one that will help and shape one another on a continual basis.

Now what happens if you put both of these personalities together, but in one person?

Most days I know exactly what I want to do.  I may not know every step in how to get there, but I at least have some direction.  Then there are some days (like today) where I just feel like nothing of consequence has occurred…that I’ve gone through the motions and not made much of an impact on anything.

I guess I feel like I’m at a crossroads in life.  I’m in my mid-20’s in a city that I’m not too stoked on and in a job that oftentimes changes from enjoyable to infuriating in a split second.  Half of my closest friends are accessible by a two-hour drive, but the other half is spread throughout the country and usually impossible to reach unless they’re on Gchat at the same time.  Sometimes I like having my own space and being on my own…other times I get embarrassingly lonely.

I’ve always felt that whatever we go through in life is part of a written plan for us, that there’s something we’re working towards.  I think I’m just in a position right now that I want to know what the hell I’m doing…and, most importantly, if the decisions I’m making are the ones I’m supposed to.

I’m not sure what I wanted to accomplish with this post, and I’m not sure that I truly did achieve anything with this rambling, but I feel a little bit better now.  Here’s to hoping that a mental health day tomorrow will help out!

Back Home

Alright, maybe I was a little bit overambitious in starting a blog right before I left for fall travel.  My bad.

Truth be told, the past five weeks have been some of the busiest I’ve had during my time in this job, as I caught five flights, visited over 100 schools, stayed in 16 hotels, drove over 2300 miles, and spent an exorbitant amount of (the college’s) money.  After spending three full weeks on the East Coast and in the Midwest, I was down home the last two weeks, gorging myself on Mexican food and spoiling my dogs.  Though the main focus of these trips is obviously to do work (son) and recruit the best and brightest, there is inevitably a lot of downtime.  I was able to see a lot of my college friends, as well as colleagues and previous acquaintances, during my time in New York, Boston, and Rhode Island, but I spent a lot of my nights hanging out on my own.  The nights I flew solo, I enjoyed trying the local grub (thank God for Yelp!) as well as some of the local grog (thank God for beer!).

For anyone curious, the world’s best sandwich is at the Front Porch Cafe in Putney, Vermont.  Order the Turkey Brie sandwich and thank me later.  Oh, and send me one via FedEx overnight.  Also, if you happen to be in Greenfield, Massachusetts, stop by the People’s Pint and get the beer sampler.  The bartender will hook you up and, chances are, you will have too much alcohol in your system to “legally” operate a motor vehicle.  The clam chowder will sober you up.

Now, however, I am back in the office and finishing up some of my local travel before I set up shop with my stacks of applications and hibernate at my desk for the rest of the fall and winter.  I’ll come back and revisit my fall travel, as I know I have a few good stories mixed in there between the driving, naps, and late nights watching baseball, but we’ll slowly move forward now.

One good story to throw in there now.  One of my last visits down home, I had set up an appointment at 8:40 in the morning, only to hear the counselor lament that the call slips she had sent out told the students that the meeting was at 10:10.  Since I have more to do when I’m on the road than just sit around for an hour and a half, I went ahead and met with the two interested students who had shown up.  It was clear that one of them had shown up to get out of class, but the other one was entirely engrossed in the school and its message.  Upon having the two girls fill out inquiry cards to get their information into our system, the interested student looked at me with some confusion and asked “What if I don’t exactly have a home address right now?  I’m kind of living out of my car.”  She went on to explain that her parents had thrown her out of the house for some unspecified reasons and that she had recently transferred to this school to escape the reputation of a drug user and seller that she had developed prior to the move.  Though I certainly don’t condone using drugs and would have used more caution if I were in her shoes (especially considering I’ll put two and two together if/when she applies), her openness blew me away.  The fact that she had made mistakes and taken moves to recover, all by the age of 17, should serve as a message to all the spoiled, pampered students I deal with who gripe about a mean teacher or some other weak excuse…it could always be worse.

I’ll be back, and hopefully with shorter a hiatus than two months this time.

Start Back At Start

Having never heard of the city where her school was located, I took out my heavily marked map of Massachusetts and asked her to show me its general vicinity.  I leaned over my desk towards where she sat, comfortable and confident since I had started the interview.  She took the map, starting to trace her finger along the highways she knew and some of the towns she had managed to explore on weekends and rock climbing excursions.  Distracted from following her gaze for a split second, my eyes meandered just off the paper and towards her arms.  Her arms…

Scarred.  From wrist almost to elbow.  Both of them.  Marks that undoubtedly remind her daily of her past, of her struggles, of her pain.

I sat back down across from her, the air stolen from my lungs and a completely new vision of this student.  As she handed back the map and promptly crossed her arms across her chest, I felt like I understood for the first time in a long time.

You can’t get through this life on your own.  She couldn’t…she needed a comfortable, isolated school in the middle of Massachusetts to find herself, to understand how to escape the demons that had driven her to mark her skinny forearms.  I can’t…I needed to leave my friends, my family, the warm weather in order to find myself.

Last Thursday was my wakeup call.

Going into my fourth year of working in admission and recruiting, I’ve met an abundance of talented, bright, and promising young individuals who are certainly succeeding in college currently, whether on my campus or elsewhere.  I’ve also met plenty of immature and, frankly, annoying students who have caused me to grow as an individual and a professional.  On a daily basis, I am given the opportunity to shape the future of America…and it’s just now hit me as to how serious that is.

Anyone who has worked in an admission office at a college knows the cycle of the college process…students search schools, students apply, students matriculate, students pay us money and go to school.  Below the surface, however, there is much more going on…the same students must grow and change in order to be ready to go off to college.  In the same token, we must all continue to grow and learn in order to become who we are destined to become.

This blog is not intended to be a sob story about the students I meet.  It is not intended to be a way for me to vent my feelings about work, though that will inevitably happen from time to time.  This blog is about me…a young, baseball-obsessed Californian who just so happens to have that type of job that has extremely exciting peaks and unbelievably boring valleys (I’ll try to spare you from those valleys).  Over time, I expect this blog to truly form its purpose, but I’m looking forward to working with its malleable state right now.