 Hello everyone. Welcome to Project Tutoring, the reality of the profession and overcoming hashtag advisor burnout for the 2022 UCAD annual conference. I want to take the time to introduce myself. I'm Gavin Farber. I work as an academic advisor at Temple University. It's in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, here in the United States and I work specifically for the Fox School of Business. I work with first and second year students and I have 10 years of experience in the field and I serve in various roles within NACADA, the global community for academic advising and also UCAD as a community coordinator for special interest groups. Also, I am a pop culture and reality TV enthusiast. So today's inspiration kind of came from melting the world of academic advising and academic tutoring with the worlds of reality TV and pop culture. Throughout the pandemic, I was thinking a lot about how Heidi Klum won project runway when she says a veterzine to a contestant or what Liz Hurley would have said on Project Catwalk. It's sort of sometimes how we are having conversations with students when we have to deliver not so positive news to them. It also allowed me to look at research on mid-level practitioners in the field of higher education, especially advising and reflect on burnout. So I thought I would also come up with some strategies today to help you through these challenges as well. So first, I'm going to go through different areas of the advising profession that you may experience through the eyes of reality TV. We're going to break through sort of when you first get your job through your orientation, a probationary period you might express going through AdDrop, which would be the first couple weeks of the semester here in the States, withdrawal, graduation and then obviously themes of academic standing and reenrollment that we have in the States. So for me, when I first started my role 10 years ago, my first week on the job felt like being like a top model contestant. When you learn that you are in the house, it's a magical time full of lots of promise and it's very much a euphoric time. You know, you're just happy to be employed basically. And as we go through the predationary period, it really does remind you of an episode at 90 Day Fiancé where you're going through, you know, three months or so of these emotions of a whirlwind, you're living your best life. It's quite overwhelming because you're busy learning the politics and policies of your institution. You're learning how to work with your student population that can be really difficult. Here in the States, we have something called the AdDrop period. It's usually the first two weeks of any semester or term and it really is a no-hold bar. You'll see any type of student possible and it really does remind you of when a housewife on a real house by series is saying my head is really spinning or if you're on a top model show and you're getting your makeover and you're in a salon and the mirrors are covered. It really is like that, an AdDrop for us. You know, we don't know the types of students we're going to be seeing, we can assume, but also the experience of AdDrop kind of makes you realize, you know, it's only a week or two of your year, but it does get better. Withdrawal is what we have throughout the entire semester where a student may have to leave a course through to personal or other reasons going on. So I felt the most appropriate would be anything from the Lord of the Rings. Standing is really important here in the States and you might also experience this in the UK and Ireland as well. It's when a student does not do well academically, they would be placed on warning and then probation and then possibly dismissed if it's continued. So it's obviously that notion of red flags, having the student come to see you, figuring out what was going on in that troubled term that they had, creating some smart goals with them possibly and also realizing what those students said, you know, they are better than that, that they are in the institutions are in for a reason and you're trying to find the very best you can to get them back into good standing. Probationary period in the States would be a continued poor performance and it really is when you may see a student where they might actually say to you, like, I really screwed up this year, I need help, I need to get back because I don't want to be dismissed from the university. And that's where that Heidi Klum mean comes in where, you know, one day they're in and one day they're out. Many universities in the United States have something called academic recovery, which might occur after a student is dismissed. So my institution, for example, a student could be dismissed on a Monday and could be re-enrolled through recovery by Friday of that week. So it is a whirlwind of just what just happened here, a student was dismissed and now they're back in their different parameters, it can be quite confusing. Graduation is obviously the goal and commencing that student is the goal. And for me, that reminds me of any winner of any competition series. I think the best example I could think of is, you know, Girls Allowed from pop stars, the rivals back in 2002 it was, they're now in a 20th year, I know they are no longer together. But for me, UK based winning competition shows, I think Girls Allowed was like the big one that came out of those singing shows, obviously. Liana Lou was obviously from X Factor as well. Really, really the best way we can celebrate our students and their achievements. Students do say the darkest things to us sometimes, you know, they don't know sometimes they sometimes feel like we don't care. Some students are like, I'm busy, I have priorities, I'm at university now, I have to figure out what I'm going to do with my life. As advisors, we are also sometimes saying the darkest things sometimes we are concerned about them. We are tough on our students sometimes, you know, sometimes we're just going with the flow if it's just one of those days. Sometimes as an advisor, I do pull a random medley from New York Housewives, or I'm like, what did I do? I've been trying to figure out a quandary with a student. This section is going to talk about attrition and retention within the field of academic advising and academic tutoring. Here's the lovely RuPaul Sasheng away. And this is one of our housewives from Salt Lake City, Utah, who is disengaging. Sometimes as advisors, we are disengaging from the industry. We are disengaging as a whole. I think the pandemic really did test many of us in what we were able to do. And I think sometimes disengaging even for a day is good for our overall mental well-being and mental health. There was an article back in 2016 from Marshall Gardner Hughes and Larry. They are researchers out of Michigan here in the United States, and they interviewed practitioners on their intent to leave the field. They based it based upon three decades of research. And what we learned was that we are losing 41.7% of professionals that spend less than five years in the field. We lose another 21.7% of the professionals who spend anywhere between eight and 10 years in the field. And the most common reasons why people are leaving the field of higher education are due to excessive hours and burnout. Attractive career alternatives, the role of the supervisor and institutional fit. For me, it's really important for practitioners to be properly tutored, be properly mentored. I often have to tell our practitioners or non-faculty to think of themselves as a faculty member, get what those faculty members are getting, do your research, do your scholarship, do what you need to do to learn as much as you can to do your very best in the field. But we do know that sometimes work-life conflicts pop up. There are limited top competencies for growth in our field, and there is a lack of challenge and a loss of passion that is going on currently in the field. So burnout. We want to overcome it, but at the same time, how do we do it? My suggestion is sometimes you are going to be at a breaking point where you do want to flip a table like Teresa from New Jersey Housewives or go off on a contestant from top model like Tyra did many years ago when she was rooting for a girl who just was disrespectful back to her. And sometimes we do have those moments in our lives when we're working with students or just not connecting with the information we're giving them and we feel so defeated that they're giving up. I would say that you have to push down the drama as one of our California Bees Housewives is doing now. Push out the drama. Push out anything insane that's going on. It'll make you a better and more passionate practitioner if you just push down the drama. And it's important to treat yourself. Treat yourself. You are hardworking practitioners working at your institutions. We work long hours. Give yourself the time to treat yourself. Do something fun for yourself. Give yourself a day off. Go see and hang out with your families. Do something that's different that's not related to your position. It'll do so good for you and so well and when you come back to work you'll feel refreshed and ready to take on the new challenges that come your way. So we're going to end our presentation with a little bit of survivor humor. While the tribe has spoken kicked somebody out of the tribe, we don't want people to leave the industry. We want to help you learn how to whoop it up and find that dream team that can help uplift you throughout this time. Our field is very challenging sometimes and it can be difficult. So again, if you're ever looking for people to reach out to, UCAT and NACADA are two associations there that are there to help practitioners through the ups and downs and we will be your whooped up dream team if you need one. If you want to contact me, here's my email. I'm also on IG at hashtag advisor Gavin, which has fun memes that I put up during some stressful periods in our time and I'd love to continue our conversation. Here are some references that I used during the presentation. If you want to look it up, hope you have a wonderful day.