Dear First-Year VP
Dear First-Year VP
A reflection of do’s and don’ts, traps, feelings and thoughts
by: Janna De Rycke
date: May 15, 2025
Preface
I write this as a reflection of the last year and a half. It is filled with love and gratitude for those I have been privileged to learn from, work with and laugh alongside.
Lifelines when Landing on Mars
As you shift gears from the classroom to the admin office, your first few weeks will be decorated with many greetings and attitudes about how “you come in peace”.
I suppose the feeling of landing on Mars is somewhat just part of the territory of a job in educational administration – especially seeing as it is common practice to move after a certain amount of time. Perhaps we could look at it as Mars being the first landing, and although you are destined to further explore the other planets and improve your adaptability everytime you land somewhere new, that first landing, in a completely different cosmos, is most definitely jarring. That’s the thing about firsts, they typically only happen once.