“Raining” in Your Emotions as a Student Affairs Professional

The Vermont Connection Volume 41 Embracing the Whole: Sentience and Interconnectedness in Higher Education Article 14 April 2020 “Raining” in Your Emotions as a Student Affairs Professional Chantel J. Vereen University of Vermont Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/tvc Part of the Higher Education Commons Recommended Citation Vereen, C. J. (2020). “Raining” in Your Emotions as a Student Affairs Professional. The Vermont Connection, 41(1). https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/tvc/vol41/iss1/14 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Education and Social Services at UVM ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Vermont Connection by an authorized editor of UVM ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact . Vereen • 107 “Raining” in Your Emotions as a Student Affairs Professional Chantel J. Vereen Content Warning: The content provided within the following narrative involves student death and depressive episodes that may cause impact for some readers. As younger generations of student affairs professionals become more involved in the field and aware of their mental health identity, there appears to be a disconnect between young professionals and those who are older and keep the state of their mental health hidden. The author questions whether young professionals’ openness about their mental health identity lines up with the institutional/general professional expectations for dealing with emotional trauma in their field. In this narrative, I discuss my understanding of how student affairs professionals encounter tragedy while holding their own mental health wellness. I will further delve into how professionals can feel restricted in their ability to voice their concerns about mental health, especially because of the fear of judgement. I will be exploring this experience through the story of my life as a live on professional in residence life between Fall 2018 and Spring 2019. Keywords: anxiety, depression, mental health, residence life, student affairs professionals,student death, trauma When It Rains... September 2018 Being on call already feels stressful for live-on student affairs professionals, specifically residence life administrators. The calls at 3am letting you know that there is another student transport, or that a ceiling caved in from the rain. Or that there is a peacock on the loose and no one knows how to get a hold of it (or how it got there in the first place). The on-caller feels this unease mixed with light annoyance when the phone rings - residence life professionals can admit that - but it is Chantel J. Vereen is a graduate student in the Higher Education and Student Affairs Administration master’s program at the University of Vermont. Chantel grew up in Central Islip, NY and completed her B.A. in Professional Writing at York College of Pennsylvania. 108 • The Vermont Connection • 2020 • Volume 41 different when the call stops everything in your world. I was the on-call professional at my former institution who received the news of a student death on campus - the first in five years. I was one of the first student affairs professionals to know. A member of a fraternity, a student ambassador, a soon-to-be engineer, dead in a residence hall less than one minute away from my front door. It happened on a Sunday; the student staff members in my department were having a luncheon 100 feet away from the site. We smiled in pictures that never made it to social media, and we inhaled homemade food that would suddenly become nauseating. The feeling of loss was difficult; the death of any student is difficult to digest. After the call, we gathered our professional staff over at the residence hall. I remember feeling the numbness rise through me as I passed a member of the coroner’s office. A swift uneasiness laid into my skin and tightened it. There, in the lobby, was the student’s girlfriend: yelling in agony, red in the face. She could not get off the ground. And then moments later, the administrators and myself noticed that she was one of our own student staff members. That is when the darkness in me started to creep out of my skin. The numbness took over my whole face. One minute I was in the lobby and then the next I was in my office crying to one of my supervisors. I did not know where the time went or how I got there. I left the office and went straight into a staff meeting, comforting the residents who needed to talk and supporting them in the best ways that I knew how. The upper administration of my department sent flowers and wrote me a “Thinking of You” card. “It’s going to be okay. You should be okay,” was something I heard constantly from my coworkers and supervisors. Should be okay. I should be. But inside, the darkness curled up and became dormant. I’m safe for now. I got this, I said to myself, walking outside into the rain. I should be okay. What’s the worst that could happen after this? If we are fortunate We are given a warning If not, There is only the sudden horror, The wrench of being torn apart; Of being reminded That nothing is permanent, Not even the ones we love, (Rickerby, 2015) Vereen • 109 November 2018 It was the Sunday after Thanks-taking (formerly known as Thanksgiving) and the on-call phone felt like it weighed twenty pounds against my face at nine in the morning. The phone call was going on for four minutes. My television flooded my living room with color. On the other line was Campus Safety Dispatch, letting me know about an angry brother who was yelling about no one reaching out to his dying brother. As I tried to coach the dispatcher over the phone, the feeling of annoyance crept up under my skin. I could hear her eyes glazing over on the phone. “I don’t even know the name of his brother. I don’t think he even goes here. But we can’t say that, right? Are you sure he’s in the system?” the dispatcher said. I wanted to pull up my Housing Director software but my laptop was three inches too far from where my free hand was. “This honestly could be a joke or just a big misunderstanding. What’s the name that the brother calling used?” I asked, placing a piece of sweet potato pie on my plate for breakfast. She says the name. My ears began to ring uncontrollably. I heard the rain start to pick up outside of my apartment windows. It was loud enough that it felt like it was inside my head. It was my student. My staff member. Robbie. Our Robbie who would call out anyone without batting an eye. Our Robbie. Who would join our staff bonding ritual of watching American Horror Story on Wednesday nights even though he hated the show. Our Robbie. Who would write research papers on his cell phone right before staff meeting. Our Robbie. Who would wear slap bracelets and a shirt that had the word “savage” written all over it. Our Robbie. In the corners of my living room, I noticed the cement walls were grayer than usual. The sound of the rain becomes louder and l (...truncated)