Reflections on Letting Go

I’m sitting in the back of the room watching four student leaders run a professional business meeting of 100 students from around the southeast portion of the United States. These students are the cream of the crop, they volunteered and bid for these leadership roles and have spent the last 10 months working to improve the regional and national student organization.

Then, in the back of the room, there are the advisors. Some like me are trying to get some extra work done, or spending time to catch up on the homework spring break has deprived me of. We’re here for the random Starbucks run or to go get a bottle of water and shuttle students to the hotel at the end of the night.

But then, there are a few other individuals in the room. Yes, they’re advisors, but they’re the extreme hands on advisors. They've gone through the leadership experiences, they've gone through lots of leadership experiences, and had a great time in college, and now they’re determined to recreate that experience for their students. But is that what we should be doing as student affairs professionals?

I had a great experience in college. Like really, A GREAT EXPERIENCE. I took advantage of many of the experiences in front of me and found things I was passionate about. But, I don’t want someone to have my experience. Whether for selfish reasons or because I know that there’s not a way to recreate the past, but students should be creating their own experiences.

Sitting here, in the back of a room that just twelve short months ago I was in the front of, I realize how important it is to remember that students are individuals. How important it is for us as student affairs professionals to not only push students to succeed, but how important it is to help students figure out how to be themselves. We need to push students to be passionate about something they’re interested in and spend less time promoting what were interested in or what we did as undergraduate students.