When I took my first professional position out of graduate school, I was ready to success some students with my challenge and support. Schlossberg was the stitching of my student affairs cape. The game was on, and I was ready to vector the shit out of that campus.
It took a few short months for me to get a reality check steeped in campus politics, slow changing campus traditions, and administrators who cared more about budgetary bottom lines than student academic success.
Feeling defeated, I would crawl into bed at night, and scribble my thoughts in my Lisa Frank diary. Behind plastic butterfly lock and key, I figured my doubts and fears were safe. I felt alone in my concerns as my colleagues seemed satisfied with spirit yells, a stock pile of Welcome Week t-shirts, and a free meal plan which allowed them to eat unlimited sub par tacos.
I thought my fate was to suffer alone, and then I found CronkNews.
With a gift for snark and honesty, Leah, Brody, Irma and the rest have been able to tell the true stories of our field, and Required Reading: The Very Best of CronkNews.com is the highlight reel. From “College Offers Free Pony Rides to Draw Prospective Students” and “Adminstrators High-Five Each Other for Having Facebooks”, to “Math Researchers Discover Diversity Really Is a Number” these articles are guaranteed to make you snort laugh, and feel comforted knowing other professionals are in meetings for the planning committee for short range strategic planning and development.
You should buy this book because it is funny. You should buy this book because if they sell enough I’m pretty sure I can get Brody Truce to wear a big bird costume at the 2012 ACPA convention. But, most importantly, you should buy this book because it is written by those who are brave enough to give voice to our the not so great moments of our field, and salutes those of us who know that we can strive to achieve more.
Editor Leah Wescott says it best in the forward,
“I’m that jerk who sits next to you at staff meetings and says, “We can do better.” I’m rarely satisfied and, if I’ve ever been great in my seventeen-year career in higher education, it’s probably for that reason. [...] While you’re out there changing higher education for the better, we will continue to make fun of the forces that stand in your way. Your job is more noble, but our job is more fun.”
Support the CronkNews.com staff by purchasing Required Reading this Wednesday, June 22nd between 12 pm and 5 pm at Amazon.com.
