Every now and again in this field you get rewarded with a #proudadvisormoment that fills you up and reminds you why you do the work that Higher Ed professionals do. This semester I've been lucky enough to have quite a few of those moments. In my role, I work with our student funding board, whose job it is to allocate the student activity fee to our 110+ student organizations. This job is TOUGH and they have to deal with a lot of flack from their peers and a lot of pressure from staff and administration, all on top of doing this work as a volunteer position.
This year, this group has taken on the additional responsibility of revamping all of their internal organization processes as well as launching a re-brand of the organization, all of which takes a LOT of additional time and energy. Throughout all of the work and stress, this group has THRIVED and has won Organization of the Month for October, and put on an extremely successful third annual Shark Tank event (where students can pitch new ideas to our faculty and staff "sharks" and win additional SAF money!). I am one supah proud advisor!
Here's some snaps taken after last night's Shark Tank with the board and our Sharks:
Books I'm reading this week:
Strong: A Confidence Journal for Runners and All Brave Women by Kara Goucher - Funny story about this book. I have been trying to work on my mental game when it comes to my running because it has been really lacking for the last few years. One of my favorite running blogs, The Hungry Runner Girl, suggested Let Your Mind Run by Deena Kastor and this running/confidence journal by Kara Goucher in order to learn more about the power that your mental state has when it comes to your running.. I was looking at them on Amazon a few weeks ago and put them in my cart for a potential future purchase.
Fastforward to last week, these two books popped up on my doorstep unexpectedly. Brett and I share an Amazon Prime account and it turns out that he accidentally purchased these books when he bought something else! We called it a happy accident and he was glad to get me two books that I was really wanting to read. I started reading through Strong last weekend and it's a super quick read with activities on how to grow your confidence which is something I'm always working on improving. I'm enjoying this and am hoping to give it a full blog review later this month!
These Witches Don't Burn by Isabel Sterling - Unfortunately I'm not liking this as much as I thought I would! It's more fantasy-esque than fun contemporary with a spooky vibe which I was hoping for. I'll stick with it so maybe it'll turn around.
Talking to Strangers: What We Don't Know about the People We Don't Know by Malcolm Gladwell - On the flip side, I'm REALLY enjoying this book so far! This is the common read at my job and we have a discussion scheduled for Tuesday so I figured I should start reading. It's actually be really fascinating so far. It's talking a lot about moments in history where some governments/world leaders misread one another which lead to major conflicts. I'm interested to see what else this book will explore and to discuss its topics with my colleagues across campus!
