What do you do for a living?

I am an associate professor of educational leadership at a public university.

How would you describe what you do?

I teach educators who would like to become school principals and school superintendents.

What does your work entail?

It involves everything from recruiting, screening, admitting, and teaching aspiring school administrators.  It’s a two-year graduate program where the students will complete a Master’s Degree by the time they complete the program.  I am the program director of the department, so I have a few more administrative tasks than some of the other professors, but essentially, we recruit, we screen, and then we work with graduate students for a two year period prior to them graduating with a Master’s.

What does a typical workweek look like for you?

My typical workweek is not unlike anyone else’s.  I go into work about 9:00 and I stay until 5:00 on most days.  All the classes I teach, I teach at night.  I typically teach three courses per semester, and each of them is three credit hours, I actually end up teaching two nights a week from 5:00 until 9:00 at night.  It’s a little different teaching schedule than teaching undergrads because all of my students have day jobs.

How did you get started in this career?

Well, I started out in education 38 years ago. During the time that I was teaching high school band.  I got my Master’s Degree and my Specialist Degree, and then moved into being a high school principal.  I was a high school principal for two years and then I became school superintendent.  I was a school superintendent for 19 years, and that gave me a total of 31 years before I retired in Missouri.

Your success[as a teacher] is determined by the success of the people that you teach.

I was only 52 years old after I retired and I had taught 31 years, so I didn’t want to quit working. So I moved out here and got a job teaching at this university.

What do you like about what you do?

It’s the best job ever.  I truly enjoyed being a school leader, I really did.  I enjoyed being a principal and enjoyed my 19 years as a school superintendent.  But I think that my true love has always been teaching.

What do you dislike about your job?

Like any job, universities have a good deal of bureaucracy. And I would say really, the only downside to the job I have right now is just the bureaucracy involved.  That’s a necessary evil.  It’s just required because of the way that the system works.

There’s very little to dislike about teaching at the university level.

There are probably different pressures that you have to deal with on a university level, of course.  If you plan to stay there, then you have to go through the process of promotion and tenure.  That can be challenging because you are required to publish in not only state but national journals.  You’re required to present on a regional, national, and international level.

You have to do a good deal of service in the university in order for you to achieve tenure.  Once you achieve tenure, all that really means is that the university will continue to employ you beyond your six years.  I just got promoted and tenured in May of this last year, which is pretty typical.  Generally, most professors have to work six years before they are considered an associate professor and get tenure status.

So, while the track to get tenured may be difficult it’s definitely not something that I dislike it’s just something people may find challenging.

How do you make money or how are you compensated in this job?

It’s a salaried position, much like any other job.  We’re paid off a single salary schedule.  There are merit increases that you can get.  We haven’t had any in several years because of the economic situations that have been going on.  Higher education does not pay well in comparison to most places.  A beginning salary at a university, even a Division 1 university, for my particular job would be somewhere in the mid-50s for a nine-month contract.  So it’s not a tremendous pay.

The advantage of it is the flexibility you have as far as your schedule and the flexibility as far as your teaching.  It’s a good gig, even though it doesn’t pay very much.

How much money do you make as an associate professor?

$80,000.

How much money do you make starting out?

If you want to back 38 years, my first teaching job paid $9,411 for a 12-month contract, and that was in 1974.  As superintendent, my salary was over $100,000 a year, but when I started at the university, my salary was $53,000, and then by the beginning of my seventh year I’m now making $80,000.

Are there any perks associated with this job?

We function off the university calendar, so we get all our major holidays and fall and spring breaks. Of course we have benefits, but the flexibility of what we do and how we work is one of the biggest perks.

To me, the biggest perk, and I’m not trying to be hammy or anything, but the biggest perk is being able to teach the students I’m teaching. I’m doing this job for fun, I’m not doing this job actually to try and make a living.

So the biggest perk I have are the graduate students that I get to work with.  These people are top notch and we’re teaching leadership, and those things to me are very important.

It’s like anything else. It doesn’t seem like work if you have passion about what you’re doing. I really love teaching and that’s really what I do best.

It’s like anything else. It doesn’t seem like work if you have passion about what you’re doing.  I really love teaching and that’s really what I do best.

What education or skills are needed to be an associate professor?

A lot of education. Your nationally accredited universities will not have professors in education that do not have doctorate degrees.  I have a Bachelor’s, a Master’s Degree, I have a Specialist Degree, and I have a Doctoral Degree.  So there is a lot of schooling involved.

As far as skills you really need to be an expert in the area you teach.  I would hesitate saying I’m an expert because that sounds arrogant, but to me, my proficiencies are in school law, school personnel, and school finance.

There is a lot of post graduate work that you have to continually participate in.  One of the perks about working at the university is that they are very good about providing you with opportunities for professional development.  They have been very good to me in allowing me to continue to upgrade my knowledge base while I’ve been here at the university.  I get to do a lot of law conferences, I present all over the United States, in the area of school bullying and prevention of school sexual abuse, and a variety of other things.  The university is supportive of those things because it does add to your knowledge base, which you in turn can then pass on to your students.

What would you say is the most challenging about what you do?

Making sure that your current with what is happening in education today.  I am a practitioner, so when I teach a graduate class, I teach it from a practitioner’s viewpoint.  The most important thing to me is that when my students graduate from the program they understand exactly what they’re supposed to do when they get out into the field.

So the most challenging part is keeping the relationship between the university and the public schools open so that we know that we’re teaching the latest and greatest so that when our students get out there, they have shortened their learning curve.  When they hit the ground as new principal or new school superintendent, we want them to know more and be better than anyone else.  So, our challenge is to make sure that we stay current and that we provide state of the art information to our students.

What would you say is most rewarding about what you do?

Watching our students become successful school leaders. And this is really our department’s slogan, and that’s the fact that your success is determined by the success of the people that you teach.  If our students graduate from the department and become successful school administrators then that’s very rewarding for me.  If they get out and fall on their nose, then that means I failed too.

What advice would offer someone considering this career?

School leadership and teaching is something you have to have a passion for.  You are never going to be wealthy.  Your rewards are going to be largely intrinsic.  Successful leadership is entirely based on your ability to build relationships with other people and your ability to recognize the talents of other people.

In the 21st century, there is no room for an arrogant leader.  You have to be humble and have humility, and if you don’t possess those things or you’re not willing to take on those behaviors then school leadership or leadership in general is not the place for you to be.

You have to recognize that you’re never going to be the end-all to what you’re doing. You have to continually learn and have to continually admit your mistakes.

It really becomes something that if you don’t have a passion for doing this, or you’re doing it for the money, or you’re doing this because of the schedule, or if you’re doing it for any other reason than you have a passion for seeing schools and children getting a better education, it’s going to be hard to succeed.

How much time off do you get or take with this job?

As a college professor, you have such a flexible schedule, that that’s a difficult question to answer.  If you don’t want to teach during the summer, then of course, you get all summer off.  If I don’t teach in the summer then I get three months off there, I get Thanksgiving, a fall break of five days, I get a winter vacation of about a month, and I get a spring break.

So if you stop to think about it, the schedule that we have and the time off that we have makes for a very nice job.

What is a common misconception people have about what you do?

That it’s not work.  They believe that if you’re a college professor, you’re somewhere up in the ivory tower, smoking a pipe and being philosophical.  When in reality, I believe good college professors are highly motivated individuals with a passion to make the world a better place.  It is a great job, but I think the misconception is how easy it is.

It takes a lot of training, it takes a lot of experience, it requires a lot of education, and it also requires a lot study.

What are your goals and dreams for the future in this job or career?

I just want to keep doing what I’m doing.  I’m 59 years old.  I will probably teach another three to ten years.  My guess is that I will retire sometime in the next few years and then I plan on traveling and enjoying myself.

What else would you like people to know about what you do?

That it can either be the best job on earth, or it can be the worst job on earth.  If you want it to be the best job on earth you have to have a passion to want to do it.

We’re all on the earth for a very long period of time, so while we’re here, we need to see if we can make it a better place for folks.  If we’re not, we need to re-evaluate what we’re doing.

What do you do for a living?

I am a football coach and Co-Defensive Coordinator and linebackers coach at Mississippi State.

How would you describe what you do?

I’m a coach and a mentor to my players. I try to instill values, work ethic, motivation and those kinds of things to eighteen to twenty year old kids.  I game plan and do schemes for upcoming opponents during the week.  I try to put out the best product that we can on Saturdays and hopefully win championships.

What does your work entail?

The biggest part of it is recruiting. And the recruiting aspect is a 365 day a year process. There’s also the coaching and practice preparation, and those kinds of things change throughout the year. Starting in August we have a preseason camp that will last about a month and then the season starts. We’ll be constantly game planning during the season. Game days are on Saturdays or Thursdays, whatever the case may be. And then come December and January, we’re out on the road recruiting and visiting schools and homes every day for two months.

If you can live without football or can live without coaching, don’t do it. But if that’s what your passion is, and you wake up in the morning and that’s what you’re thinking about, dreaming about, and wanting to do, then just go all out for it.

Then February and March is off-season conditioning, getting the players ready to start spring ball and getting them in shape. Then the end of March, beginning of April is spring training where we practice amongst ourselves for about a month. Then during May, we’re out on the road recruiting again evaluating juniors and seeing high school coaches. And then the early part of June will be high school camps where we’ll have kids on our campus working out.  Then halfway through June and most of July is vacation.  Come August we crank it back up again and do the same schedule.

What does a typical work week look like?

Sunday we’ll come in if we played a game the night before and watch the previous nights or afternoon game. We’ll grade it, evaluate it, take notes on it and that same day we will start game planning on our next week’s opponent and actually have a short practice with the team. We go over corrections and start implementing the game plan for the next week’s opponent.

Then Monday we’ll get in at six in the morning and go till about eleven or twelve at night game planning for the next Saturday. Then Tuesday we’ll game plan all day, practice in the afternoon and come back in that evening and have more meetings, and watch practice on video tape. Wednesday is a little more of the same thing as Tuesday except on Wednesday nights we make recruiting calls. So when the second practice is over, we’re on the phone with recruits and coaches.

Thursday we do meetings, game planning, and finish up the weeks schedule and have practice again. And Thursday nights is usually date night with our wives, so it’ll be the first night of the week we’ll get to see our wives. Fridays are a little bit more low key but we’ll do our picture and reminders for the week for the players and we’ll have tests that we’ll have ready to give to our players that Friday night. Then we’ll have a short practice, and meetings at the hotel. And if we’re traveling, we’ll travel to wherever the game site is of whoever we’re playing. And Saturday’s is just getting ready for the game with the walk through and the pregame and then hopefully have a victory that night.  We have twelve weeks of that.

How did you get started in this career?

I played college football, and when I was done playing my college coach told me that he thought I would make a great coach. I hadn’t really thought about it that much before but I said I’d look into it. So I did student teaching at a high school and while I did that, I actually coached the high school team and just fell in love with the environment and coaching.

After that first year of coaching high school ball I got a graduate assistant job at a wonderful school up in New York City. I did that for a year, and went to graduate school. I got to coach, got my feet wet, and did a lot of grunt work. And then the next two years I was a defensive coordinator for a small Division III school up in Pennsylvania called Albright College. I then went back and did another graduate assistant job at Georgia Tech, just to get a taste of Division I, and see what division one coaching was all about. I did that for two years. After two years doing the graduate assistant job I got promoted to full time, so I was a full time division one coach. I think I was at the time twenty nine years old. I started moving up and going different places from there.

What do you like about what you do?

I just love being around the players, it helps you stay young. I also love college football and football in general. I get paid to watch tape, coach, and be involved in a college football environment every day. The impact you can have on young people’s lives and seeing them develop from an eighteen year old to a twenty two year old young man and have a big impact in their lives is extremely gratifying as well.

What do you dislike about this job?

Maybe at times the hours and the stress that the job comes with would be the only negative. But, you know, it comes with the territory. Actually, with all that being said, there is some excitement along with the stress too, it gets your adrenaline pumping so even though it could be viewed as a negative, it’s still part of what makes the job so fun.

How do you make money, or how are you compensated in this career?

Salary. I’m a salaried employee and then we’ll get bonuses for going to bowl games or good GPA’s etc. We also get paid for working camps during the summer. And then most places have either a car deal where you get a dealers car or they’ll give you a stipend to rent or lease a car.

How much money do you make as a Co-Defensive Coordinator?

Currently $280,000-300,000, in that range.

How much did you start out making in this career?

We start off as a graduate assistant, we basically get tuition and books, some meals, and maybe eight hundred dollars a month to live off of. And then my first defensive coordinator job I made twenty four thousand dollars a year. I did that for two years. I was making about $60,000 at a Division II job and then I started getting more and more compensated as I started moving on up the ranks.

What education or skills are needed to do this?

I got an undergraduate degree in sports management with a minor in coaching. A lot of people get their education degree. I went back and got my education certificate as well, just in case I wanted to coach high school football. But to be honest with you some of the classes that helped me the most were when I did some graduate work in psychology. I did graduate work in educational psychology at Fordham University and undergraduate work in educational psychology or organizational psychology at Georgia Tech.

What would you say is most challenging about what you do?

The recruiting part is probably the most challenging, because you’re going against the same scholarship that every school is able to give. And you’re competing to get to know the recruits and learn what makes them tick and what they’re looking for in a school or in an athletic program.

What would you say is most rewarding about this?

Probably when a young man calls you five, ten, or fifteen years after you’ve coached them and tells you how things that you’ve taught them or lessons that they’ve learned from being around you are actually helping them in their current profession or even with their kids. Those kind of things are probably the most rewarding, knowing that you’ve had an impact on somebody’s life.

What advice would you offer someone considering this career?

Only do it if you love it. If you can live without football or can live without coaching, don’t do it. But if that’s what your passion is, and you wake up in the morning and that’s what you’re thinking about, dreaming about, and wanting to do, then just go all out for it.

How much time to you get off?

After signing day, which is the first Wednesday in February, most coaching staffs get somewhere between three and five days off. Most coaching staffs get spring break off when the university takes spring break. Then during the summer it varies but the vacations range anywhere from three weeks to five weeks vacation during the summer. But the number of Saturdays and the number of Sundays that are spent invested in this profession far compensate any time off.

What would you say is a common misconception people have about what you do?

Probably the biggest thing that most people think is that we only work from August until November. Many people can’t understand that there are actually things to do outside of football season, and truth be told, that’s probably some of the busiest times.

What are your goals or dreams for the future for this career?

To try and put myself in a position to be a head coach of a division one school, positively impact a lot of people, try and do things the right way, help kids get their degrees and an education, and win a lot of football games.

What else would you like people to know about what you do?

I guess just that everybody sees the glory that comes from when you win games and now a days it’s almost like a TMZ society with college football on blogs, message boards, and ESPN.com. There’s a lot of negative that’s always being written about college football coaches or college football players. But the truth of the matter is 98% of the time people that are in this profession are in it for the right reasons and 98% of the kids that are involved in college football are some of the best and brightest in the country. And I think sometimes the small percentages of people that are doing negative things get overblown where the majority of people are doing great things and are really trying to make a difference. That kind of gets underplayed a little bit. There are just some great people in this profession and there are some great great kids that play this game.

What do you do for a living?

I am a research assistant in an Internal Medicine laboratory.

How would you describe what you do?

Our lab studies severe systemic inflammation caused by sepsis using a mouse model. My job entails much of the bench work associated with cellular analysis, molecular biology, mouse surgeries, and data collection.

What does your work entail as a research assistant?

The answer to this question depends on the day you ask. Some days I am performing cecal ligation and puncture (CLP) surgeries on mice and harvesting bone marrow stem cells from healthy mice for use on the sick mice. Some days I stain cell cultures with flourescent antibodies for use in flow cytometry. Other days there are no experiments so I clean the lab, organize data, type up procedures, and just try to stay busy with things I don’t normally have time to do. Essentially, some days are very busy and there is no time for lunch, and other days are very slow.

In any given month I will have used basic laboratory techniques such as ELISA, FACS, tissue culture subculturing, western blotting, gel electrophoresis, etc.

Daily I am using basic science concepts such as calculating molarity of a solution, figuring a dilution factor, using equipment such as pipets, beakers, graduated cylinders, centrifuges, incubators, and autoclaves.

I also order all the chemicals and disposables for the lab, keep up with our current stock, and maintain MSDS reports.

How did you get started?

I started working in a research lab as an undergraduate, went to school for my master’s degree, and then found this job. The job is really an entry level position into research science.

What do you like about what you do?

My job has periods of redundancy, but in general no day is the same. Yeah, I might do five ELISA assays in one week, which is redundant, but each assay has samples from mice that received various treatments, so it is always exciting to see the results in the end. Sometimes what you definitely think will happen does not, and then you have to go back and think about what could have caused that: personal error, misinterpretation, bad reagents, or perhaps the results are simply unexpected!
There is a lot of thinking and trouble shooting that you can’t find in many jobs.

What do you dislike?

Some days when there is a lot of bench work I get a cramp in my neck from looking down and my hand hurts from doing so much repetitive pipeting. My hand wouldn’t hurt if we had more sophisticated equipment so I advise anyone looking to do research to go to an institution that has a lot of money! LOL.

How do you make money/how are you compensated as a research assistant?

I am paid through a research grant. Grants come from various supporters: NIH, NSF, the university, etc. Once the grant money runs out, if we do not have a renewal or another grant awarded to us, I will have to find another job. This is what people call “soft money.” “Hard money” comes from the university or institution. My boss is paid with “hard money.”

How much money do you make as a research assistant?

Even though I am paid through a grant, the university sets my pay grade. The established pay grade for my position is level 4. This means that no matter how long I stay with the university, no matter how many people I supervise, no matter how many projects I am over, I cannot get a raise unless my position is changed. Generally, the university pays 40% of the established pay grade, so even though the government says the position is worth $32,000 a year, no one will ever be offered that amount. I gross 27K a year. I do not get paid overtime, but I do get holidays and sick days.

How much money do you make starting out?

Depends on your bargaining power. Sometimes there is nothing to negotiate as mentioned above. I would say for someone that is not highly qualified, they could at least get 25K.

What education or skill are needed to do this?

At least a B.S. with some experience. Even if you worked as an undergraduate someone would give you a chance. A M.S. would be preferred, and a PhD would be overqualified.

What is most rewarding about this job?

Finding answers. Big or small. Everyday you get to fit one more peice into your puzzle. It never gets boring when you think of it that way.

What is most challenging?

Being confidant in my abilities. I know I am a good researcher, but sometimes I get so nervous when I am handling expensive equipment or kits. In general everything turns out okay, but there is always that nervousness in the beginning. I try to hide it from my boss so that he doesn’t lose confidence in me, and sometimes he even acknowledges that a certain experiment is challenging and that we can repeat it if we need to. That helps take off some of the pressure.

What advice would you offer someone considering this career?

Go to an institution that has money and lots of collaborations. This way if your grant runs out, someone in another department can possibly offer you a position in their lab.

How much time off do you get/take?

I get 2 days a month, but I only use them when I have to. We don’t get every holiday like a bank, but we get most of them.

What’s a common misconception people have about what you do?

They think I must be incredibly smart and talented. Usually I tell people I am not, I just stuck with it. Just like learning to play the violin. You are terrible at first: you make mistakes, don’t know what comes next, can’t hardly make sense of things. Then when you practice for a very long time, you start to do things with more grace and the big picture becomes more clear, and before you know it you are wowing your boss with your insight.

What are your goals and dreams for the future?

I am applying to medical school now, but if that doesn’t pan out, I plan to stick with research. Maybe I will go back for a Master’s in Public Health degree or a medical lab technologist certification. I want to move up into a directors role if I stay in the lab, but I will need more than a master’s degree for that.

What else would you like people to know about what you do?

Working as a research assistant is not the same as being in grad school. It truly is a 9-5 sort of job. Most people do not work over every day, but it does happen when you are close to a publication or grant submission.

There are some really quirky professors out there. Sometimes you have to let their rambling go in one ear and out the other: learn to separate the fly poo from the pepper. LOL. Don’t ever feel like you have to put up with any form of harassment for the sake of your job or qualify your harassment experience as a result of “cultural differences.” Here, everyone who is an American citizen has the same rights.

This in-depth interview was conducted by one of our contest contestants Jordan Grummer.

What do you do for a living?

I’m a history professor and writer.  I teach U.S. foreign policy and political history at a major university.

Can you describe what you do on a day to day basis?

I teach 3000 and 4000 level courses on American foreign relations and one specifically on Vietnam.  I also teach a course on America since 1945. I teach two courses a semester.  When I first started I wrote notes.  I had to read and make up lectures for those, you update and change them.  I have to get ready for class before every class.  Because I try to lecture without notes as much as I can, I try to be prepared, it’s the least I can do is be organized and be prepared.  What I’m trying to do is to get most of my regular students to just be literate about history.  To know what WWII was and the basics.  I also train masters students who usually teach public school and then Ph. D.’s who teach at the college level.

So would you say your work also entails research and writing, and you do that on a day-to-day basis?

Absolutely.

What do you do with Master’s and Ph. D. students?

You teach them the literature more than just the narrative.  You teach them about the various ways that WWII has been written about—the various interpretations. And then you also teach them how to do historical research and how to write.  But then I spend probably half my time writing books and articles.  The idea at the university level is that you come here rather than going to junior college because you’re taught by people who are creating new knowledge.  You’re not just taught by people who are reading the literature and telling you about it.  You’re actually being taught by somebody who is making new knowledge in the field.  So research and teaching for me and writing are all bound up together because I initially wrote for more specialized audiences, but lately I try to write for a more general audience.  The stuff I write is researched and footnoted.  It’s reviewed in academic journals, but also its sold in Barnes and Noble—any educated lay person ought to be able to read it.  I think that’s the way you ought to be able to communicate to your students.  They don’t come in with any specialized knowledge.  But I have a routine.  I’ve been going to school since I was six. The fall semester.  The spring semester.  I used to teach in the summer time but I don’t do that anymore.

How did you get started in history?

Well, it was by accident.  My wife’s always threatening to sue me for marrying under false pretenses because I was pre-med until I was senior, and we got married before our senior year in college.  I had been admitted to medical school.  But I remember going to the University of Michigan. My brother-in-law was doing his residency there.  He was a neurologist and all of his patients were dying of brain cancer, and he was just under tremendous stress.  So I thought, “I don’t know if I want to do this.  I don’t know if I really want to be a doctor or not.”  I always liked history and literature and that sort of thing, and so I began to talk to a guy named Robert Divine who’s a historian at Texas, a big name.  So he encouraged me and that sounded like a neat thing to do.  I knew I wasn’t going to make near as much money as in medicine, but also I thought I’d have a more fun life.

What do you like about what you do?

Well, I’m my own boss.  I have to do my job and everything, but not like an office setting where you have to punch a clock.  It offers a lot of flexibility.  It was great for raising a family because my wife worked.  I could pick up the kids from school and work at the house, or I could work at night.  So it’s a great profession for a couple in with both of them are working, and I really liked that.  Now I teach the same classes over and over but my research is always different.  So I get to explore something different.  And I like writing. I like the creative process as a journalist.

What do you dislike about being a history professor/historian?

You don’t really start making any kind of money until later in your career.  Everything’s back end loaded in this profession.  It’s tough because it takes 8 years to get though college—minimum 8 years, usually ten years for your undergraduate and graduate degree and you’re not making any money then. Budgets are always tight.  It’s tough economically and financially.  It’s really really tough that way.  It tends to be somewhat isolating.  I’m a pretty gregarious person.  Writing I spend a lot of time by myself when you do research or write. I don’t like that.  But it’s a sacrifice you make.

How do you get compensated?

You’re evaluated on three categories.  Teaching and teaching evaluations by students and then by your peers.

How long did it take to get to distinguished professor?

25 years.  Most people don’t make it.  If there’s money for raises, the faculty get raises according to their merit.  When you’re promoted from rank you get a larger raise when you go from one rank to the other.  So there’s incentive to do that.

Is it pretty cut throat?

Yeah, although you either have a good record or you don’t.  Sometimes it’s based on reputation.  You’re reputation’s based on what’s on the paper.  So it’s pretty hard to fake it.

How much money do you make starting out as a historian?

I think starting salary for assistant professor in history is about $48,000 for nine months.  If there’s an opportunity to teach summer school then you get paid separate for that—not very much but probably ten percent of your salary.  The raises the last ten years have not kept up with the cost of living.  They’ve been two percent or less.

How much do you make as a historian?

$180,000/yr (This particular interviewee declined to answer this question. However they directed us where to find it because it is public knowledge since this is a university job.)

What kind of education and skills do you need to be successful as a historian?

Well, you need to go to a good graduate school.   You have to take seminars and take classes and eventually get your Phd.   I took it in US history and European history.  Then I had two thematic fields in African American history and diplomatic history.  But you take a wide variety of courses in American history, I did European history because I was going to do the Cold War.  And then you have to have two languages.  In some places you can replace statistics for one of the languages.  They teach you methodology, how to think about history, what are the various schools of thought, and then how to do research.   And if you want to write about a topic where do you get the information to write about that?  You look at presidential papers, memoirs, documents diaries, newspaper articles and other books.  You pick a topic and you research it.  It’s practice for writing your dissertation.  Then you pass your comprehensive exams which is testing over these broad fields, and then you write your dissertation which is a book length study of some particular topic.

How much reading is involved?

Thousands of books.  But you learn how to read them.  Academic books are not like a novel.  They have a thesis, and they’re trying to prove a point.  Now, they have a narrative which tells the story that you’re writing about.  Like if you’re writing about the….Battle of Gettysburg.  You’ll tell the story of Gettysburg in general terms, but if you’re thesis is the Union prevailed, you may argue, because the Confederate positioning was bad—the strategic planning was bad.  Or maybe it was logistics.  Maybe the armies weren’t being supplied properly.  So then you try to prove that point.  If you’re a Ph. D. student, you’ll know what the narrative of Gettysburg is. What you want out of that book is the point you’re trying make is.  And then did they prove that point.  You can usually read the introduction, the conclusion and maybe the first part of each chapter.  You can boil it down.  All books are reviewed by other scholars in journals, and so you can go and look at the reviews. To try to boil it down. It’s a skill.

What’s the most challenging part of the job?

Patience. You have to sit. It took me ten years to write my first biography. It took me ten years to write my second book. Patience.

When you’re writing the books do you do a lot of interviews?

I do some interviews, but a lot of people are dead.  Most of it’s archival research; Presidential libraries, the National Archives, the Library of Congress.  Most of it comes from letters, diaries, and reports.  If you’re doing foreign affairs cables between the state department and the embassy overseas then you’ll look at memorandom between the President and Secretary of State.  Those kinds of things.

How did you learn to be patient?

Fear.  If you’re not gonna get tenure what are you going to do?  You’re screwed.  You’ve wasted ten years of your life.  You got a family.  You better sit.  You better have some patience.  If you just hated it I couldn’t do it.  But you get lost in it.  It’s basically like detective work.  So you get to explore.  It’s interesting.  The more skilled you get at it, the more interesting it is.  The more efficient it is.  The less boring it is.  You set goals for yourself.  If I don’t get anything done I still can’t get up.  I’ve got to stay here until it’s don. Discipline.  That’s the key.

Whats the most rewarding aspect of it to you?

Two things.  Getting your books published and getting them well reviewed.  And then seeing students later on after they’ve graduated and gone out in the world and they come up and say I really liked this course.  They might say “I’m not necessarily using it in what I do, but I feel like it was a significant part of my education.”  And that’s rewarding.

What advice would you give to a student who’s an aspiring historian?

Make sure it’s the last thing you can do.  I mean make sure it’s the only thing you can do because it’s hard.

The job market’s flooded.  It’s been flooded since I entered the job market forty years ago.  We don’t regulate…unlike doctors or lawyers we don’t regulate the supply.  So there’s far more people looking for academic jobs than there are positions to fill.  So it’s very competitive.

It’s a major endurance test for the first 15 years.  Don’t do it because you can’t find something else to do.  You’ll get frustrated.  You can always try it.  You can get a masters and teach public school which is great.  You can get a master’s in two years, and make a decent living.  A high school history teacher now with a master’s degree probably makes close to $40,000.  That’s not great, but it’s not that different.  It used to not be that way.   So you can get a master’s program and stop there and teach public school or then you can decide to go on.

How much time off do you get/take?

I mean you can take as much as you need as long as you get your work done.  You set sort of goals for yourself.   I don’t know, it’s hard to say.  I’m older now so I don’t work as hard as I used to.   If I want to go play golf, I’ll go play golf.  If it’s a pretty day, I can go play golf on Wednesday afternoon and work on Saturday afternoon.  You see what I’m saying.   I probably take two vacations a year. There’s the school year where you teach and you come up here.  There’s 16 weeks in each semester.  But writing and teaching and research are all of one piece.  So I come up here pretty much 8 to 5.  You’ve got to, that’s the key.  And it’s hard because it takes so long to see the end product.  I had a colleague who said it’s like plowing a field.  It’s back and forth, back and forth and back and forth. It gets very tedious but then it begins to sort of come together for you.

(This is the second of two interviews done by our contest winner, Erin Robertson.  Another excellent interview.)

What do you do for a living?

I am the director of campus ministries for Christ on Campus at a major University.

How would you describe what you do?

My goal is to help students take a step closer to God and prepare them to serve him and fill roles of leadership when they leave here, both in the church, in the community, in their professions, and wherever they go.

A lot of it is just investing in the lives of students. There’s some teaching involved, but a lot of it is just life-on-life mentoring, talking, helping students to think about their lives, their goals, their careers, the direction their future is and how God is involved in those things.

How did you get started in this career?

When I was in college, my career direction was toward being a pastor of a church. My last semester of school, some people asked me if I would be interested in beginning a ministry for college students. So I was 23, and in 1982, my wife and I moved and started Christ on Campus and have been here ever since.

What is it that you like the most about what you do?

I love working on a college campus. There’s always things going on, there’s always interesting people to meet and talk to, there’s always issues that are important to students. It keeps you young, it keeps you thinking, it keeps you engaged. And I like the fact that we’re able to impact the lives of students at a critical time that kind of shapes the trajectory of what they do the rest of their lives. Most of what is accomplished here, you don’t really see until 5 or 10 years down the road: You’re planting seeds and starting ripples that you see spread throughout their lives over the next 50 years.

So patience is a characteristic that’s necessary?

Patience is the characteristic, not evaluating success at the moment, but realizing that success is something measured over the long haul.

What is something that you dislike about your job? Or maybe, something that you don’t necessarily dislike, but you like less?

The nature of our ministry is that it’s a faith-based ministry. My salary, our budget is all provided strictly on contributions, which really puts you in a place of having to rely upon God and rely upon other people to make good ministry happen, to pay your mortgage. And it’s a great thing in the sense that it builds your faith, and it’s a not-so-great thing in that it sometimes produces stress, and…part of my job description is asking for money and raising funds. And I don’t know of anybody that enjoys doing that, and so that would be the hardest part of what I do.

And so, on that note, how much money do you make as a minister? Does it vary depending on the year’s budget or depending on how much people give?

We have established for our ministry a salary schedule, much like a teacher’s salary schedule. Based upon number of years of service, the salary is adjusted, and so at this point I’m in year 29 and my salary is about $58,000 a year. I started at $12,000 a year when I began in 1982.

Is there any other way that you’re compensated?

There are the personal compensations, the spiritual blessings, the sense of reward that comes from being involved in the lives of people – that’s definitely a sense of compensation. There’s not a commission based on the amount of money raised…we’re overseen by a board of directors, and they’ve been gracious at certain points – 5, 10, 15, 25 years of ministry – to give gifts to my wife and I for those kinds of milestones.

You mentioned being in school…what are some of the educational and/or learned skills that are needed to do what you do?

I have degrees in theology and counseling. Those kinds of skills are helpful. What I learned when I graduated with my theology degree was that I had learned a lot of answers to questions no one was asking. Then, it became about learning, what are the real issues people deal with? What are the real questions in their minds? Learning to be able to listen and kind of redirect and ask and help people come to realizations on their own about what’s valuable and what’s important. Everybody’s in the process of writing the story of their lives. So a lot of what I do is trying to help them recognize how their story intersects with God’s story, and that those two things are interrelated, and that their story has the most meaning when it’s interconnected with God’s story…and so helping them to put those things together and integrate their life and their faith.

You’ve kind of already answered this, but what is the most challenging about what you do, and what is the most rewarding about what you do?

Probably the most challenging thing is that you can’t make decisions for college students, and sometimes they don’t make the best decisions. And so learning how to ride with them in bad decisions, and to love them and care for them when they make bad decisions. I wish I could always make the right choices for them, but you can’t. So listening and talking and helping them deal with bad decisions – it’s hard to see students who have been involved spiritually and who then find themselves getting distracted by the world, distracted by others, and then drifting away from God and those values they had before, and pay sometimes severe prices for it, as far as not being able to stay in school, personal prices, relationship prices they pay because of decisions they made when they don’t include God in those decisions – that’s the hard part of that.

The rewarding part is to see people start to grasp how their story and God’s story mix together, and to make choices that lead them to lives that have eternal significance. That’s not necessarily missionaries or preachers; no matter what career they go into, they can go into it from the perspective that it’s part of God’s story, and there are eternal values that they can contribute as an engineer, or as a banker or a teacher or a doctor. When the light goes on that what god has called them to is part of their story, it’s exciting to see those things happen.

And so, taking into account the challenges and rewards, what kind of advice would you offer someone taking career or coming into this type of career?

I would tell them to come in and be willing to be challenged, to be willing to listen, to be willing to be stretched. To realize that all of the answers you may’ve been taught growing up, there may be other answers to that than you know. But to always come back to the foundation of God’s word. Part of the challenge of a college campus is the pluralism, and the negative view towards absolute truth, that all religions are equal. For someone in my position, I always have to come back to what does Scripture say, what does God’s word say? To evaluate your world view and your goals from the perspective of God’s word rather than evaluating God’s word from the perspective of your culture or your values or your goals.

You mentioned that one of the things that you like is being on a college campus – does that coincide with the college schedule? Does your schedule match up with the college schedule and, if so, do you get to take off more time than a typical pastor of a church would?

That’s one of the great benefits of working on a college campus is that my schedule matches the University schedule. So there will be, from mid-August to mid-December, three or four months of intense activity and then a month break. And then three or four months of intense activity, and then the summer break. That kind of rhythm lets you plan your life, so you know that when things are crazy and hectic in September and October, there’s a break coming. It works well for family also, to know that I’m going to have more time at Christmas, a less demanding schedule in the summer, especially when my kids were younger to know that those times were coming up. And it gives you a chance to rest and recuperate.

Are there any misconceptions that people have about what you do?

A lot of people think of our roles in campus ministries as kind of “babysitters” for Christian students. That if they send their kids here, that we’re going to keep them out of trouble and make sure they go to church on Sundays. College students don’t want babysitters and I don’t want to be a babysitter. They’re going to make their own decisions on their spiritual values, and for many students who grew up in the church, maybe their first spiritual decision they ever make on their own is, whenever the alarm clock goes off the first Sunday their on campus, they have to decide, am I going to get up and go to church or not? And it’s then that they start to live out the spiritual values they brought with them. My goal is not to babysit them, but again to help them understand the implications of following Jesus, and what that has in store for their lives, their relationships, their careers and their future.

Speaking of the future, what are some of your personal goals for your future career, and what are some of your goals for Christ on Campus?

Personally, I can’t see myself doing anything other than what I’m doing. I’ve been on a college campus now, either as a student or a campus minister since 1977. I’ve been a perpetual college student for 35 years, almost. So I don’t, at this point, see myself doing anything different. There may come a point where people tell me, whether through words or actions, “you’re too old, it’s time to move on and do something different.” But right now, I’m content and happy in what I do. And part of what’s developed over the years…this is my 29^th year, and this morning I had breakfast, like I do every Wednesday, with a guy that was a student here in 1982. He was at our very first meeting of Christ on Campus, the first fall he was here, and I’m still able to pour into his life and minister to his life, and part of what I enjoy is being able to do that with our former students and alumni as they go into their careers, to continue to have a relationship with them. And I enjoy that – that kind of keeps the ministry fresh as well. So, professionally, I don’t see myself doing anything different. I don’t have any bigger goals than what I’m doing now. Personally, just enjoying my life and my family, enjoying the things I do and the people I’m around. I’m past the point of huge ambition, and I’m trying to learn the lesson of contentment and trusting God to provide for needs and opportunities and not trying to make those things happen.

Is there anything else you’d like the general public to know about what you do?

I would like the general public to know that God is very real on the college campus, that what you read in the papers is usually just the negative – the parties, the drunkenness, the things that go wrong, the criminal reports – but that God is very real on college campuses. There are a lot of visionary, Christian young people on college campuses, and that the future of the church is in good hands, and especially at the University of Arkansas. The presence of Christ is very real and authentic, and it’s an exciting place to be for a Christian student. And if you want to grow spiritually, there’s very few places better to do that than a University campus and being involved in the campus ministry.

Wonderful. Thank you very much!

You bet.

What do you do for a living?

They call us a sorority house director which puts me in the property management category.

How would you describe what it’s like being a sorority house mom?

I live in a sorority house and every sorority house is different. But probably and this sounds funny about 90% of my job is just being here. They just want someone here to take care of things when they do arise.

What does your work entail?

Normally, on a day-to-day basis, I will oversee my staff, help to plan menus, and do the food orders or shopping. I also schedule repairs and maintenance to be done for the house. I eat all my meals with the girls and try to be here when they need me for something.

…these girls are my heroes. They’re funny, they’re bright. They party harder than any kids I’ve ever known, and then they study harder. They’re very well-rounded.

I communicate with the house corporation, which is the group of women or the corporation that actually owns the house. I do a good deal of talking or e-mailing with that group because they want to know everything that’s going on here and how. Like if the faucet in the senior wing is working, or what did we find out about that. Each house is going to vary widely though.

How did you get started?

I was looking for something to do. You know, you always find things in a funny way. My sister has a lake house in a little town called Wimberley, Texas. She called one day and said, You need to be a sorority house mom. I said Yeah? That would be fun. But I don’t know how I would go about it and she said, Well, you call these two women. And these two women run a business where they place house moms all over the country in sororities and fraternities”and they happen to be located in that little town. And they have an ad in the local paper and my sister had just picked up the local paper one day and thought to herself, my sister would like this. So I called, and the lady I talked to was Barbara, and she said, Well, tell me about yourself. And I started off with, Well, I’m a Pi Phi¦ and you know, went on to tell her that I was a CPA and had owned and operated a business and I’ve got a lot of experience in a lot of different things, most of which I don’t ever want to do again.

I love being mom. I like everything about being a mom¦and I get all the fun parts. I get to have all the fun things, but yet I don’t have to pay for college or the orthodontist. I don’t have to bail them out of jail or anything the parents have to do. I just get the fun part of it.

So she told me what they had available all over the country and I immediately found a place I wanted to go. And it just happened to be the Pi Phi house there. Anyway, that’s how I got that job. I never would have known how to go about it. And probably half the women on this campus got their jobs through these two women in Wimberly, Texas.

What do you like about being a house mom?

Number one, these girls are my heroes. They’re funny, they’re bright. They party harder than any kids I’ve ever known, and then they study harder. They’re very well-rounded. I love being mom. I like everything about being a mom¦and I get all the fun parts. I get to have all the fun things, but yet I don’t have to pay for college or the orthodontist. I don’t have to bail them out of jail or anything the parents have to do. I just get the fun part of it.

What do you dislike?

Oh, sometimes what I dislike is having to deal with my board. The women who are my bosses. Especially when I’ve got two or three of them with really strong opinions about how things ought to be done and one of them will come and tell me to do this, and another one will come the next day and say, No, why don’t we do it this way, and you know, it puts me in a bind because they’re each telling me something different and I don’t know who’s advice to follow.

How do you make money/or how are you compensated?

I’m paid on salary.

How much money do you make?

$32,000 a year, and that’s for a 10-month contract, and then I get a $300 a month car allowance and $300 for insurance. I get my own apartment. I have no bills to pay.

They used to want to tell me everything that everyone didn’t like about something¦be it the food or the colors of the rooms or whatever. I finally had to say, I can cater to vegetarians. I can cater to allergies. I can cater to religious beliefs. I cannot cater to pickiness. If you are so picky and you really don’t like Mexican food, that’s your problem, you’re going to want to go out and eat that day.

There are times I just feel like I’m being paid a whole lot to do nothing.

What education or skills are needed to do this?

You have to like kids, if you don’t like college-age kids, this would not be the job for you.

What is most challenging about what you do?

The most challenging is getting through the first year. And I’ve heard that from others. That’s because you come in and everyone is used to things being done a certain way, but they don’t want to tell you what that is. When I came in I even asked the girls, What do you see me doing? What would you expect from me because I don’t know. And they never told me. And then they’d sit around and grouch, Well, she doesn’t do this and she doesn’t do that. Well, tell me what you want! Sometimes it’s difficult, but I think we’re on a pretty even keel right now. They used to want to tell me everything that everyone didn’t like about something¦be it the food or the colors of the rooms or whatever. I finally had to say, I can cater to vegetarians. I can cater to allergies. I can cater to religious beliefs. I cannot cater to pickiness. If you are so picky and you really don’t like Mexican food, that’s your problem, you’re going to want to go out and eat that day. Please don’t expect me to make everyone happy, every meal¦And they do much better because they understand that I’m not here to be their short order cook. But if they’re picky, that’s their problem, not mine.

What is most rewarding about being a house mom?

I think what I like”it might not be true”but I like thinking that I have made an impact on their lives. It is so rewarding to hear from girls, or just to have them come by the house, who have graduated two or three years ago.

What advice would you offer someone considering this career?

When you go to a campus, find an ally, find a friend doing the same job, because a lot of times, all you really need is someone to talk to. She can’t solve your problems, but it does help if you have someone who kind of knows what you’re going through and can listen to you. What I have learned later life is to set boundaries. I think boundaries are really important. That first year I really didn’t have any. If they wanted to wake me up at 2 o’clock so that they could get juice, I’d get up and unlock the juice machine. Now I put out a 10 o’clock snack for them every school night, and if they come in at 9:15, I can say Are you going to starve to death before 10? Well, no, but I just¦ I said, Are you going to starve to death before 10? No, and I said, Then wait until 10. Now I have set more boundaries, and now they don’t test me quite as often. But I think as long as you’re willing to get up and do that for them, then they come to expect it. So, it’s kind of like being a mom or a dad that you have to know the things that you really want to do, but you also have to decide when you want to do them.

How much time off do you get/take?

Well, like today¦it’s what, 10:30, 11 o’clock in the morning and I’m still in my robe. I didn’t put feet on the floor until 9:30. Technically, I get two weekends a semester off. The norm appears to be about one weekend a semester, and I think that I could push that issue and get more time. I just haven’t needed to go anywhere or wanted to go anywhere. I get all the Christmas break, Spring break, Thanksgiving and all of that off and I’m paid. I get the two months, June and July off in the summertime, for which I’m not paid. I’d tend to sit at home and watch Law & Order no matter where I was, but if I want to go out to eat with a friend, I can do that. I’ll have my cell phone with me and if for whatever reason they needed to call me, I could come back. And that doesn’t really happen that often. The parents all have my cell phone, and I’ve never gotten a call from one of them at three in the morning saying Where is Mary?. They have called in the daytime and said, Mary has Strep throat. Would you go check on her? and I’d say Sure, no problem!. I think they like knowing that I’m here, and that I can take their temperature and I can recommend that they go to the doctor if I think they need to.

What is a common misconception people have about what you do?

A common misconception would be that we’re all 75 years old and we just kind of sit in our apartments all day and do nothing. When I was in a sorority I kind of likened it to turning on a light switch. I don’t know how it works, I just knew that every day I’d go down, there was food. And then when I flipped the switch, the light’s going to come on. I don’t know how it works. I didn’t need to know how. But there really is more to it.

What are your goals/dreams for the future?

My goal is very simple. It’s to make this chapter the best in the country. The chapter where I went to college, just won the Balfour Cup, which is the national award for excellence in Pi Phi. It’s given out to one chapter every year. And I was just thrilled to bits that my chapter won it, but now my goal is for us to win here.

What else would you like people to know about what you do?

By and large how you feel about your job is really determined by your personality and your choices. I mean we each have obstacles that we don’t like, be it the house corporations or bratty girls, or lack of funds for what we consider important. So you can go in and say, Well, they don’t do this and therefore I hate it. Or you can also choose to say, Well, they do this. You know what? I’m going to work with that. I’m going to do it their way. You really just have to be flexible. I would say flexibility is the key to it and maintaining a positive attitude.