The world could use a lot more kindness and a few more cardigans (well, maybe not in Denton, Texas because today’s high is 80).

If you don’t have the strength to be kind today, I hope other people’s kindness washes over you like a wave.

Five ways other people’s kindness impacted me before noon today:

1. I was overstimulated in the shirt I wore to work and I was throwing a fit and my coworker gently suggested I go get a new shirt from the storage room.
2. A friend texted me and told me to take deep breaths and that everything would be alright.
3. When my anxiety is high, I need concrete details and definitive dates RIGHT! NOW! and my coworker recognized this and provided me with dates and details.
4. Drivers stopped their cars to let me cross Bell (even though the stretch in front of TWU should be reserved for pedestrians. Fight me.).
5. A friend video chatted with me in the middle of my workday and we planned a lunch for next week.

Is it just me or does the end-of-semester craziness start earlier and earlier every year? I think that’s why I completely blew past my three-year workaversary. We are smack in the middle of summer orientation season and I still don’t know where winter or spring went!

This third year has been AH-MAY-ZING, let me tell you. This year brought a few new firsts for me. I attended my first professional development conference outside of Texas, which meant flying on a plane for the very first time!

My colleagues and I attended the Southern Association of Advisors for the Health Professions (SAAHP) regional meeting. This year, it was held in Memphis, Tennessee.

 There weren’t any sessions geared toward pre-nursing advising, but I gathered valuable information about the allied health professions, gained insight 

into the application processes for other schools, and met some amazing advising colleagues at other schools. Also, in the middle of all the learning and networking, I got to have dinner with two great friends who moved to Memphis.

I’m really grateful that the College of Nursing funded that professional opportunity for the entire advising team.

Usually, when I write my “workaversary” post, I end the post with a list of things I learned during the year. Honestly, this year has gone so quickly, I haven’t had the time or mental energy to sit and do meaningful reflection, so I don’t have an organized list. What I do have is a weird, rambly kind of thing that could one day become an organized list.

Wylijanna’s Weird, Rambly Kind of Thing That’s Not an Organized List of Stuff She Learned During Her Third Year of Advising

• Taking on more responsibility is hard and asking for help is even harder. (I was called a task hoarder multiple times during the year.)
• The world is deep and wide and I need to step out of my comfort zone and see more of it.
• Colleagues will come and go and it doesn’t get any easier to say good-bye to them.
• Doing new things is hard, but they get easier. And even if they don’t, you still have do to the things.
• No matter how much water I drink, it’s never enough.

 

Coats and scarves and gloves,
And layers and cardigans.
Oh, wait. It’s Texas.