As I press on with passion towards a career in college student development, I invite you to look into my past and to envision the future with me!
Going into my senior year of college, fresh off of a summer of ministering to high school students at summer camps across the nation, I found myself deep in conversation with my former Christian Life and Thought professor. We stood on Newport Beach, watching 400 freshman play Buck Buck, digging our feet deeper into the sand and laughing as a pile of guys fell in a mess of arms and legs. I remember the Diet Pepsi she had in her hand as she asked me the inevitable question that all seniors get, “What are you going to do after you graduate?”
“Well, I don’t know,” I said, feeling the weight of the limited options that my soon to be acquired English degree would allow. “I always thought I’d work with high school kids, but I just spent my entire summer with them and not once did I enjoy being with them as much as I’m enjoying this moment right here. Don’t get me wrong, this was the best summer of my life, but I love the connections that I get to form with these freshmen more than any that I made with the kids at the camps. Even as Young Life leader I never felt like this.”
Then that Diet Pepsi-drinking, ordained Assemblies of God minister said seven words that would change my life forever.
“Have you considered working in Student Affairs?”
Until that moment, I had somehow been oblivious to the fact that all of the people whom I had looked up to over the past few years, the people who had mentored me with their life more than their words, who had given me time and shown me love… that these pillars of my college experience... where actually getting paid to do so!
“Azusa Pacific has a fantastic Master’s program in Student Affairs. You should look into it.”
After years of stressing and deliberating over my major and subsequent career choice, weighing the implications of one and the benefits of another, all the while feeling like every choice fit me as uncomfortably as a pair of wet jeans, I knew in that one moment:
"Work full time with college students? Now that’s something I may have been born to do!"