Why Pursue a Career in Higher Education?

by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Aug 8, 2009 | Career Skills, Job Search, life purpose

I’d put safe money down on the possibility that most of us working in higher education didn’t have that dream as kids. As for me, I wanted to be Evil Kneivel , then I wanted to be Elvis.

Growing up in the ’80s, my attention soon turned to the yuppie lifestyles of the day, and I started college with dollar signs in my eyes, and dreams of a BMW. My first two years, I was a management major, but I really studied partying more than anything else. Calculus wasn’t my friend, and first semester my sophomore year, I earned the first “F” I made in anything. (But it was a high “F,” almost a “D,” and one of the hardest grades I ever earned. I was in hall council, because I liked pizza at meetings and cookouts with the women’s halls. By the end of sophomore year, I made two big decisions…changing my major from Management to Political Science, and applying to be a resident assistant.

The change of major was first a nod to the reality that calculus was a pre-req for several other classes later in the curriculum, and I just wasn’t that good at it. I chose Political Science because a.) politics always interested me, and b.) I thought is was a good background for law, and if I couldn’t be part of the big yuppie revolution through the glories of corporate management, I had heard that Political Science was a good background for law, and everyone knows that lawyers make SCADS of money.  The RA thing grew out of two interests…doing cool programs and having fun, and the hope that being an RA would keep me out of trouble.

My junior year, I defined myself as an excellent programmer and jumped deeper into the whole student life realm, by becoming a peer health educator. It wasn’t where I saw myself coming in, but it was pretty good. Senior year, I kept enjoying life and the RA job, but somewhere along the way, I lost sight of the fact that I was going to need a job after college.  I drank way too much, and one particularly bad evening, I overdid it and ended up getting arrested. Aimless is as aimless does, I guess.

The aftermath of this one event would stay with me, not because it destroyed my future, or caused me to be dismissed from my RA job; neither of those things happened. Instead, I learned that people were there for me, even when I made mistakes, and that some saw potential in me that I didn’t see myself. It wasn’t until this time that I started to understand that these people in Residence Life and other parts of Student Affairs weren’t just holding down jobs, they were answering a call, living out a higher purpose. In giving their time and energy to students like me, even when we faltered and arguably didn’t deserve the compassion, they were perhaps even performing a sacred duty.

Somewhere along the way, this message started to stick with me, and I started to think about going into Student Affairs. I was lucky enough to get an assistantship with Health Education, and I packed those 2 years of my M.Ed. program with activities in Housing, Health Ed, and Student Development; I came to know some great professionals and some great students, many of which I have kept track of in one way or another, as my generation passed into adulthood and another came to college.

There are days I ask myself why I wanted this, when an endless stream of issues waits at my door, or comes barging in, unannounced. It’s then I remember an aimless wanderer, and the people that pushed him back onto a path; I see myself in both, and it’s then I know I was meant to do this work.

So much for being Elvis.