Tin Man had a heart.

Random person: So you're going to be a teacher or a principle?

Me: Well not exactly.  So you know how colleges and universities have academics?

Random person: Yeah.

Me: Well I'm the co-sponsor to that.  I get to do the really fun stuff that some may think is fluff...but if they only knew...

That’s usually how the conversation goes once I tell someone what I’m going to school for.  Then they look at me like “oh, I really don’t get it but I’ll pretend like I do by saying…”

Random person: So you work with students to put on programs so they have something to do?

Me: Sure.

It never frustrates me when people do not understand what I do, I actually kind of like it, it gives me a little mystery or it’s like I have a little inside joke; probably because I really do like what I do.  Working with students is crazy fun and even the unfavorable situations many times are still very rewarding. 

It’s some of the other stuff I don’t agree with…like the way higher education is increasingly being run like a business where the intention and purpose behind education is for the M-O-N-E-Y.  I didn’t sign up for that, but the more and more I learn about the field the more of what I realized I did not know.  

Working for a year and a half at a college before I pursued a masters in this stuff gave me only a crumb of the monster cookie that is higher education.  Mainly I speak about the political nature and the business fundamentals used in its systems.  Unfortunately, it is unrealistic for me to believe that politics and money grabbing are avoidable, it’s the society we live in and it is what it is.  And, you know what?  I’d be okay with these things so long as students were not negatively affected. 

I often think of people in our society’s businesses (higher ed included) as robots set on autopilot where the only thing that fuels them is money, power and control over resources.  It will be impossible to avoid interactions with people who are founded on this philosophy and even more impossible to survive if I don’t know how to think like these robots.  And let me interject, I do not believe all people operate under the auspices of malice and cut-throat politics, but it is worth noting that those who do are very much present.

But how do I navigate a system that I think impedes upon the purpose of what we do (the students) and how do I deal with a culture of expectations where money is the goal?  I decorate my tin. 

In other words, I’ll be okay with moving like a robot so long as it wears hot pink…or dances and laughs…or thinks with positivity and speaks with kindness…and understands that money may be power but is just paper without humanity.  I just don’t want my clarity to be muddled while I'm guiding my students. 

A famous sociologist, I cannot remember which one, once said that you can never really live outside of the box, there are always boundaries, even thinking outside of the box is playing within it. That’s LIFE as we made it.  Decorating my tin will at least give me some satisfaction that although still inside, I’m playing on the edge.