By: STEPHEN M. SALISBURY
Columnist
I don’t know about you, but I’m tired. With only about two and a half weeks left of classes this semester, I can certainly see the light at the end of the tunnel. The problem is the light feels like it’s coming from a runaway freight train. With the latest round of midterms underway and projects needing completion and revising, this time in the semester seems unusually exhausting. But, it is Thanksgiving next week and that will hopefully give us all a few days to take a break from everything, enjoy some downtime with our families, and hopefully avoid getting into any arguments with our favorite uncle about the recent election results.
I have something for which to be very thankful this holiday season. I believe we all come to college in the hope that our degree will open the door of opportunity to pursue a professional career for which we spend so much energy for four to six years to get the training necessary to acquire said jobs.
I started back to college as a first-year student at the age of 42 in the spring of 2013. It took me four and a half years but in the summer of 2017 I finally achieved my lifelong dream of becoming a college graduate. I earned my B.S. in Economics from the Judd Leighton School of Business and Economics here at Indiana University in South Bend and then enrolled in the Master’s Program in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
I wanted to be a white-collar professional for the second half of my working life after working mostly in the service industry for the previous 25 years. I love dealing with numbers and managing resources effectively which is why I chose the disciplines I pursued. While I was an undergrad, I engaged in many campus activities including student government, being president of a club, peer mentoring and tutoring. Even writing for the student newspaper gave me the opportunity to develop the discipline of completing a weekly writing task and investigating things happening around campus and out in the real world.
I participated in conferences and workshops like the ones I went to this past Friday and Saturday discussing IU’s Online Education offerings and development and IUPUI’s National Peer Mentoring Symposium. The point of doing all of these things was to make myself as well-rounded and skilled a candidate when competing for jobs out in today’s marketplace.
After earning my Bachelor’s Degree, I started looking for analyst jobs primarily in university operations or municipal environments. I very much wanted to remain in a university setting and if I could stay at IU South Bend that was the ideal. It took a little over a year, and there were times when I thought I’d never be given a chance, but I am excited to announce that starting this week I will be the new Business Operations Manager for the Vera Z. Dwyer College of Health Sciences right here at IU South Bend.
I am accepting this wonderful opportunity to become part of a vibrant administrative team on our campus. In my wildest dreams, I could only imagine having the opportunity to become a college administrator and thanks to the work I was able to do and the myriad of experiences I’ve had while at IUSB those dreams are actually becoming a reality! While I won’t be writing this column anymore after our next and final issue of the semester, I am so excited to become a permanent full-time member of the professional staff on our campus. See kids, dreams still do come true. Don’t give up and work hard and anything can happen.
