Staff But Not...

Hello, friends!

One of the interesting things about Urbana is that there is always an interplay between a staff of students in general who are attending the conference and a staff of the specific students from your chapter or campus who are attending Urbana. Each staff is actually given 2 jobs at Urbana. There is your Urbana job (working the bookstore, leading a seminar, doing registration, etc.) and then there's your chapter job (checking in on your students, making sure everyone is doing OK, casting vision for going back to campus, etc.). This can make Urbana exhausting but also a little bit frustrating.

I'll give you an example. Last Urbana (Urbana12) my job was to work registration and then to be "on call" through the rest of the conference, filling in jobs as needed. I worked in the bookstore, ran posters to different parts of the conference, loaded luggage into buses, and I think at one point I may have driven to a copy center in St. Louis to print out something for a seminar. It was fast paced, fun, and unpredictable, which had it's benefits. However, it also meant that I couldn't really schedule any time to meet with students and see how they were doing because I didn't know if I was going to be "on the clock" or not. When I finally did get to see them on one of the last nights, all I could do was apologize for not being around more.

Understand, it's not the worst thing in the world for students to have to fend for themselves a little bit. My job as staff isn't to hold their hand through everything and tuck them in at night. They are adults and can pick seminars, go to main sessions, and find places to eat just fine. However, Urbana is a bit of a different beast. Since it happens only once every 3 years, you don't see nearly as many repeat conference goers, which means that it's new to everybody. Add the sheer size of the conference (16,000+ attendees) into the equation and you can see why I would want to be present for my students.

You can imagine my relief this year then when I realized that I actually only had one student as my primary charge! Matti was taking care of the ACFers (Actually, he was also working Urbana so he was in the same boat as me in previous years. Thankfully, we had a volunteer come in to help). Megan was in charge of the ICF students. There weren't any NCF or Lincoln University students there. My only student was a BCM student from Mizzou who came at the last minute. It's so much easier to text one student every day or so and check in than it is to try to do the same for 5 or ever 12 students. It was a huge blessing!

Looking back, this was probably one of the few conferences during my past 5 years on staff where I didn't feel like a total failure in terms of taking care of my students. I was working hard, that's for sure. But, I was able to focus on my Urbana job and know that there students weren't completely lost. It was a good feeling.

Have an excellent day!

~Adam

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