Perpetual New Kid
Traveling around to the Commonwealth campuses – especially now that I’m (temporarily) covering all of them – has brought me squarely in to contact with a phenomenon one doesn’t expect to encounter often: being the new “kid” in school. Unless you move a lot, you have this happen just a few times in life: preschool, elementary, middle school, high school, college, maybe grad school. But, if you work in higher ed, it can happen again every time you change jobs.
And, as a traveling media consultant for Penn State’s system of schools, it is now something I am experiencing on a weekly basis! The utter confusion when finding a classroom, the puzzled looks on students’ faces in the commons when they try to figure out if I’m “that guy from Econ,” the random faculty member admonishing me for parking in the reserved lot. I know eventually my youth will fade and I’ll look like hapless lost staff and eventually I’ll even know where the cafes and offices are when I arrive, but right now it’s wholly unique – and a little exciting.
Just gotta keep an eye out for the campus map for the next few weeks!