Good question. A question I seem to get a lot after people hear what my previous career plans were… Especially by my mother.
Student Affairs Professionals do not typically start out in a high paying position, and that scares my mother. I have tons of student-debt to get over, while still having to financial support myself to live. I need to be able to pay for a place to live, and food to eat, keeping in my mind that I need to pay for a car and insurance to have a way to get to my place of work. Financials have a lot of weight in my decision, but I don’t want it to make the decision for me.
I chose Student Affairs because I had professionals in my life that helped me get over my problems. Being a student leader that involved with big organizations on campus, as well as many other small ones, I have had the opportunity to gain knowledge and advice from many different student affairs professionals. I love that they were able to help me, and serve as my mentor, even when I hadn’t really realized that this was a job that I could go into. It was a student affairs professional that told me that I should go into that field, and that touched me because it wasn’t something I had thought about. I hadn’t thought about my experiences that I have been fortunate enough to have in terms of helping students overcome their problems, working with administration and faculty to solve student issues, and serving as a role model or mentor for students to continue through their college career smoothly, and once I realized all of that I knew I was going into the right place as well.
I have always been a compassionate person that loved to help people, but it is definitely nice to know in what capacity I plan to help people. And being on a college campus puts me in my element because education is important to me, and I know how hard it is to keep going with that education once life happens.
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