By Stephanie McAlpine, 2014–2015 NIRSA Championship Series Committee Chair

There’s a lot that’s unnerving about your first few NIRSA Annual Conferences and/or Championship Series tournaments. You aren’t always sure what you signed up for and can find yourself stuck in the middle of a three-ring circus, you feel like you have to start figuring out what you actually want to do with your life, and you can’t go back to campus even if you really need to.

But a lot of really awesome things happen too. In fact, if you ask me, the NIRSA Annual Conference gets much easier and more rewarding after you’ve attended two or three times. By that time, you have a pretty decent idea of who you are and what you value; you’ve started being pickier about who you spend your time with and you have some serious life lessons under your belt. Basically, you’re a stronger, more independent person—especially when it comes to handling your professional life. With the Annual Conference and spring National Championship Series events upon us, here’s some proof that it’s good to move on and up within the field.

Packing and deciding what to wear

Remember the days of frantic mass texting between your friends over the harried question, “What are you wearing?!” This used to happen before every single volunteer opportunity and every interview as well as every morning of the Annual Conference. It even happened before every single social at the Annual Conference. Plus, once you were at the conference or tournament, you were stuck with what you brought. So suddenly there were $50 baggage fees and extra tips to the luggage assistant—since you brought every option in your closet—to deal with.

Fortunately, after you’ve established your NIRSA identity, you pretty much stop caring about what everyone else is wearing. Sure, there are still moments where you need some backup or clarification from your colleagues—just last year my friend was going to an independent social for another university and the invite said “Dress to impress,” whatever that means—but, for the most part, at our age you wear what you like and what you want.

Networking

We’ve all experienced moments at a NIRSA event when we felt alone. There was maybe that one time when you were forced to talk to someone during an icebreaker and had to put up with them even after you really didn’t connect. Those types of moments are awkward and uncomfortable and you probably don’t want to repeat them. Luckily, over time, you’ll very likely find that you won’t have to. Once you’re a little more connected within the collegiate recreation and NIRSA community, you realize that you can make a NIRSA “three degrees of separation” with just about anyone. And just like that, those awkward and lonely moments have vanished.

Additionally, you become a lot busier as the years pass; you gain additional responsibilities and may find yourself serving on a NIRSA committee or work team. Any of these things will make your free time much more scarce and precious, and you become careful with how you spend it. You also learn who has stuck around, who really adds value to your network, and how to address meeting new colleagues. You don’t feel the pressure to include everyone all the time. At the same time, you do remember what it meant—and how it felt—to be introduced to the NIRSA President or the tournament’s Director of Officials.

Hearing “No”

After you’ve been in the collegiate recreation profession for a few years, you’ve probably gained the freedom to say “no” every so often to various requests. What’s also likely happened is that it’s become easier to hear the word “No.” Maybe you didn’t land that job, or didn’t get to participate in the final game or on a committee you were interested in. Perhaps a friend said “Maybe” to attending a social with you—we all know that “Maybe” really means “No.”

Whatever the occasions, you have not only developed a thicker skin from years of hearing the word “No,” but you also know from experience that “No” doesn’t ever lead to the end of the world—or even necessarily to the end of the story.

Going on first interviews and dealing with evaluations

The only reason both of these things have gotten so much easier is because you’ve probably had to go on so many interviews and undergone so many evaluation you’re practically a pro at them now—a pro who never wanted to be a pro, but a pro nonetheless. You’re also better at small talk than you once were since you have some tried-and-true stories and anecdotes to work with. You’ve become pretty aware of the interview mistakes you frequently made in the past too.

Perhaps most importantly, you’ve come to recognize that evaluations and constructive criticism should alleviate pressure instead of adding it. In general, over time, everyone has a better grasp of who they are and they learn to take each new interview or evaluation as the learning experience it is intended to be.

Being free of FOMO or the “fear of missing out”

If you haven’t already noticed, a common consequence of getting more experience is that you care a lot less about what other people think. This is glorious! This means that when it’s 10:00pm and your first game or session is not until 9:30am the next morning, you can choose to sit in your room and watch the latest episode of “Parks and Recreation” on your laptop instead of feeling like you need to go with your friends to the post-social hot spot. You have whatever the opposite of FOMO is, and it makes many things about life that much easier to handle.

Other notable things to look forward to and/or celebrate about this stage in your career: you finally understand most NIRSA acronyms, you’re not (as) terrified of networking events, and your name tag and self-introduction have a few more accolades.

So celebrate the good times and join your colleagues at a NIRSA event—like the 2015 Annual Conference—this spring!