Growing Pains

Here I am in the sixth week of graduate school, in the sixth week of a new phase of my life, and I figured it was time to sit down and take stock of everything. Before I get to the meat of the post, let me preface with a mini-life update, and then I’ll share what has spurred my newest “Eureka!” moment.

Life in my new state is… different. Last time I posted, I spoke to my feelings of fear about my job; fear that I would be inadequate and fear of being far away from home. Well, I started my job and my new graduate classes, and, surprisingly, the first few weeks breezed by. It has definitely been part of the growing-up challenge to get used to my routine (work during the day, class in the evenings, balancing homework time and social life time), but slowly I’m getting the hang of the balance. Luckily, I’m surrounded by a wonderful group of new friends and wise professionals who are more than willing to support me and share their own experiences.

All the professionals I’ve met along the way have been more than happy to share their grad school highs and lows, which has been SUCH a valuable resource for me during both the application process and now that I’m actually a grad student. However, I wish I had listened to them a little more closely…

You see, as I was going through the grad school decision-making process, I was told by all of my mentors and advisors that there would be an intense period of unease in my first semester as a grad student. They all told me that they were homesick, tired, and struggled with questioning their decision to attend grad school. When I heard all of this, of course I sympathized, but in the deep recesses of my mind, I thought, “I can get through all that. Sure, I might be a little homesick, but there’s no reason to question why I’m in student affairs—I know I’m happy in this field, that I can make a difference!”

How silly of me, to think I was above that struggle.

Sure enough, the past week has been a very thought-provoking and intense time, with me being uncomfortable and unsure of myself in EVERY aspect of my life, and desperately wondering whether I was meant to do this after all. It wasn’t caused by any one factor, which should have clued me in to what this struggle was REALLY about, but it did seem overwhelming and all-encompassing.

Two experiences have helped me begin to process these crazy and intense emotions and questions.

First, in my wonderful Student Personnel Work class, our professor asked us how our transition was going. I raised my hand and was honest with the class that I was having a tough time. And then… ALMOST EVERYONE ELSE RAISED THEIR HANDS AND SAID THE EXACT SAME THINGS. Turns out, my mentors and advisors were right (as usual :))—EVERYONE goes through a period of homesickness, discomfort, and questioning. As my professor put it, we ARE in a transition right now. We are neither here nor there—a strange combination of professional and student, distanced from our undergraduate institutions yet not entirely certain of our new institution, far from old friends and settling in with new. And IT’S OKAY TO BE IN THIS AWKWARD TIME. Hey, everyone’s awkward right now. We just have to embrace it, own it, and learn from it.

The second “Eureka!” moment I had regarding my struggle came last night, in my Ethical Leadership in Higher Education class. There we were, discussing different leadership theories, talking about how the study of leadership has changed over the decades. In the midst of our deep discussion, we hit upon Heifetz and Laurie’s 1999 article “The Work of Leadership” and their discussion of how to deal with active challenges versus technical challenges, and then dealing with the resulting distress.

That word “distress” resonated with me, and with the class—we spent a significant portion of the discussion on what it means to deal with adaptive challenges and the distress that comes with them. In an adaptive challenge, change is necessary. With change comes stress, discomfort, and pain. As a leader, you must be able to negotiate the line between encouraging your followers to grow (and dealing with their resulting discomfort) and pushing them too hard.

Here comes the “Eureka!”; maybe you’ve already spotted it—with change comes stress, discomfort, and pain.

Think about physical growth when you’re a child and adolescent—you experience growing pains, your body’s physical manifestation of the growth that’s occuring. In mental and professional growth, we must also deal with pain; it just doesn’t manifest itself physically (although ask your average grad student, and I bet you we can tell you ALL about our physical problems because of our stress!), but rather as acute discomfort and pain. Growth IS stress. That’s a fact of life.

However, when the “growth spurt” is done, when you’re out of the “pressure cooker” and on the other side, you have to consider—wasn’t the pain worth it?

For me, the pain WILL be worth it. For the rest of my career, yeah, I’ll have to deal with stress, discomfort, and sometimes pain, but if it makes me a better person and a better professional, isn’t it worth it? Yes, it is.

And just as I accept and embrace my fear, I accept and embrace ALL of the discomfort that comes with growth, because it means that, slowly but surely, I’m growing up. The question is how I’m going to deal with the discomfort as it comes. And thankfully, I have family, friends, and colleagues who are the best support I could ask for in my times of growth. I can only hope I serve them the same way.

The sixth week of my graduate career is almost at a close; the rest of my career is on the horizon. And it’s a beautiful thing.