Higher Ed. Preview Day

Congratulations to all of you who have been accepted into the Higher Education program! To those of you who are here for the Higher Ed. Preview Day - I look forward to meeting you bright and early at the registration tomorrow! :) This year's central planning committee members have worked very hard to put together all the details for the preview day, so I am very glad that many of you are able to make it! (To others who are not able to come, no worries - I wasn't able to make it last year, either. However, hope to have you join our other preview events to learn more about our program and what it is like to be a student at Penn GSE!)

One year and two days ago, I had the phone interview for my current graduate assistantship with my current supervisor Alyssa. Looking back at the past seven months, I am so grateful for such an opportunity to learn from and work with everyone in this fabulous team! It is very hard to believe that in two days, I will be sitting in on the assistantship interviews for the next cohort with my supervisor and teammate. I am very excited to meet the next cohort members who are interested in my current assistantship, but also feeling sad that this experience is coming to an end for me. I have learned so much during this short amount of time, and have definitely felt more confident about my overall abilities after being trained and advised by experienced professionals like my supervisor and others on the team. This job involves lots of opportunities to interact with prospective and accepted students (depending on the time of the year), as well as with current students, faculty, staff, and alumni. It provides great learning opportunities toward event planning and advertising, and helps me further improve my written and verbal communication skills within the field of Admissions. It also challenges me to prioritize various responsibilities on a daily basis and helps me to strengthen my time management skills. In addition, I have built up an awesome network through this assistantship, which is a great comfort for me realizing that the relationships will last despite the upcoming end of this assistantship.

Good luck to all of you at the assistantship interviews! Please feel free to email me if you have any specific question for me about this position!

An Inspirational Quote to Share

Positive words contain immense power to touch one's heart and inspire one's life. They easily touch my heart and motivate me to keep pushing forward toward another milestone despite the tremendous stress I experience from time to time...

Here is one from one of my professors this semester that I would like to share with all of you here. It is such a blessing to have educators around me who truly care about their students, and can inspire us in big or small ways on a daily basis. I hope you will be inspired, too, even without knowing about the context. :)

"I wanted to take a moment to thank you for your willingness to both listen and provide honest and genuine feedback. I hope you each know I truly appreciate your presence and the offerings contributed to the class. Each voice is important and relevant. At the end of the day, we become better because of the knowledge gained by our individual and collective experiences. The work we do is significant and if you already haven't, you are about to embark on a journey that can and will save people's college experiences, if not some of their lives. You will make a difference and I simply want to do my part in making sure you are all confidently ready. Students across the country will be lucky to have you in their lives. Just remember, we will continue to grow no matter how much experience we have. So, be present, transparent, honest and risk taking by leaving your comfort zone when possible- our students are watching and they need you, they need us." 

Some Reflections of these Past Couple Weeks

It has been so wonderful communicating with some of you out there whether via email, phone calls, Facebook, web chats, or even in person!! I am looking forward to more opportunities to communicate and meet with more of you during the rest of this semester! Thank you to all of you who have been reading my blogs and sharing this journey with me either directly or indirectly!

It was such a relief to finish our Comps. after an intense amount of time spent sorting through materials, reading, reflecting, and writing! My brain was fried pretty well after the Comps, but it was also great to get a sense of how much I have learned and absorbed during the process. We won't find out the result of our Comps. until later, but I have definitely seen great improvement in my own critical thinking ability and my academic writing skills through this program so far. It was one of the main reasons why I decided to pursue a master's degree after several years of working because I wanted to gain more theoretical knowledge and some in-depth understanding of why practitioners do what they do on a daily basis in today's world. I have indeed felt more equipped through this program, and on top of it, the graduate assistantship has been helping me to continue to develop professionally and expand the valuable network. Sometimes, it is very fun to learn about the concepts and rationales of certain policies and practices in class (such as the Enrollment Management course I'm taking this semester), and immediately be able to observe or even carry out the practices at my assistantship right afterwards. 

We had one week of classes after Comps. and before our Spring Break, which was also when I finally started my last course of the semester / program - Globalization and the Universities! As you may remember, I have been very excited about this class for a long, long time, and our professor is awesome! Dr. Ruby is so knowledgeable and experienced, and definitely has his own humorous and serious way of teaching this class and keeping us engaged from 9a.m. to 1p.m. on Fridays! Like most classes we have, there are tons of readings for this class. It is humanly impossible for anyone to start reading the day before classes and hope to have completed all of them, which I had learned last semester, so I did mine a couple days prior to the last class with my still-fried brain and exhausted body! :) Thankfully, that was the last course before our Spring Break! 

That being said, even though I was hoping to do some studying, applying for jobs, and just getting things done ahead of time for after the break, it did not happen over the break. I was completely relaxing - sleeping, watching TV / movies, window-shopping, AND of course, finally spending some quality time with my husband, our extended family and friends! I felt refreshed and re-energized after the break, but also kind of felt guilty for not sticking to my plans. 

Besides of feeling the "rush" from "loosing" one hour due to Daylight Saving, time has just been zooming by after the break! Some of my cohort members who started to apply for jobs early are getting into the phase of interviews, so I am definitely feeling the pressure. More and more project/paper deadlines are approaching, which also add to the pressure. Things are getting busier and busier at my assistantship during this time of the year, so the increased excitement and joy of more connecting with prospective and accepted students and more opportunities to learn on the job are also reminding me that time is fleeting here. I have been frequently asked about experiences as a current student, AND plans for the future upon graduation, so it is getting very real to me that I am graduating SOON! Guess what?! We have also received emails about RSVPing for participating in the GSE commencement ceremony, and tomorrow is the deadline for us to get our graduation regalia! 

Phew! At this very specific moment, I am both looking forward to graduating and not wanting to graduate at the same time. There is definitely a feeling of approaching to a milestone right now, but everything is also rolling just like usual for many other people that are around me. I am learning to take more deep breath, and cherishing each day and each person around me in spite of the fast pace here. 

Until next time, hope you are all well! :)