Joe Sabado – Higher Education & Technology Leadership

I was reminded of my privilege as an able-bodied person to have the ability to freely walk around when I could not walk last week.  This was all because of a severely sprained right foot.  I had to get an X-Ray to make sure none of my bones were broken.  For the last few days, I’ve been hobbling around, even dragging my leg,  trying to go up and down our stairs at home and going from the parking lot to our buildings at work. I started to notice certain things like how far the elevator is from the parking lot, even from the disabled parking spots. It took me a little longer to get from one meeting to another. I had to ask one of my colleagues to bring some water so I can drink some pain medicine.

My disability is temporary. In a couple of days, I should be walking around again with no pain (I hope), but this sprained foot did provide me a reminder to check my able-bodied privileges.

There are many privileges we are afforded in life and sometimes I know I don’t always appreciate them.  This painful albeit temporary experience certainly reminded me of that.

This is as much as reminder to me as to anyone else I connect with on twitter or on other social media platforms.  Let’s practice what we preach when we tell others to practice kindness and be the leaders we’re supposed to be in our professions and our communities.

I was about to tweet something sarcastic and derogatory during the Oscar Award show,  about to join others who were mocking some celebrities,  but I caught myself and stopped.  Are we not to model the behavior we want our students and colleagues to be? From time to time, I see tweets that remind me to “check your last 10 tweets. Would someone hire you based on those tweets?”  Even the benign sarcasms can be misinterpreted on social media.  Look, I’m no Kristen Stewart fan when it comes to her acting but the tweets that came across my timeline were not the most positive, even mean. I actually felt bad for her as she limped on stage.  She may never see those tweets but some of the students or friends we’ve been preaching to about the proper use of social media may.

I’ve been guilty of not being so nice on social media either, not on purpose, but inadvertently.  If you catch me acting on social media in a way that’s not appropriate, make me accountable by calling me out .  Let’s make a commitment towards practicing what we preach by modeling good and acceptable behaviors we expect our students and others who are looking at our actions can follow.

“Millennials are tech savvy” was a statement mentioned in a training session about working in a multi-generational workplace I attended.  “Prove it to me” attitude was attributed to Gen Xers (1965-1980).  I equate these statements to the model minority myths associated with Asian Americans. They are general statements applied to groups that may or may not be true. One limitation of assigning traits to groups using one variable (generation) in my opinion is that it is too simplistic.There are also implications to these statements in that by accepting these generalities and neglecting to see the  uniqueness of the individuals we deal with, we may just be making inappropriate assumptions. The other limitation of just using generations to assign attributes is that it pigeon holes individuals into categories that may not be accurate or limiting. I took this “How Millennial Are You” quiz and I appear to have many of the characteristics attributed to Millennials. I’ve joked in the past that I am “millennialesque”.

I remain open to the idea that given the experience and events that shaped the different generations, there are general differences/similarities I need to be cognizant.  For example, while I do not believe that all Millennials are tech savvy, they are exposed to technologies  that were not available in previous generations. These technologies then influence how the generation conduct their lives, per Marshall McLuhan’s quote – “We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us”.

Going back to my point of the uniqueness of individuals, should I attribute my “prove it to me” attitude to the fact that I am a member of Gen X or is my cynicism borne out of my negative experiences growing up as an immigrant in the United States and/or my experience in the workplace? Is it part of my Filipino culture?   Is it just my personality? I took a DISC personality test recently in which I scored high Dominance/Influence.  Apparently, some of my attributes include: demanding, strong-willed, determined and ambitious. I also like to challenge status quo.

Fact of the matter is that human beings are multidimensional shaped by our own unique experiences and backgrounds.  In my case, my world view was/is shaped by many things including my immigration experience (I came here as 11 years old in 1984), my religion,  my socio-economic status, educational experience,  gender, and the values my parents instilled in me.

As student affairs professionals, we deal with many student populations and while we may assign students into categories (first generations, international students, …), it is important that we go beyond the generalities and respect the uniqueness of each student, shaped by their own backgrounds and experiences.

We generate stories from things that happen to us which in turn drive our emotions. We than act based on our emotions. This is one of the lessons learned in a training I attended on “crucial conversations” last week. The training is based on this book “Crucial Conversations: Tools For Talking When Stakes Are High“. As I learned, there are three types of stories we tell ourselves that could lead us to negative results:

• Victim – “It’s not my fault.”
• Villain – “It’s their fault.”
• Helpless – “There’s nothing else I can do.”

This lesson resonated with me as I am guilty of telling these stories to myself from time to time. In some ways, our actions become self-fulfilling prophecies. Years ago when I started my career, there was an incident I thought I was discriminated unfairly because of racism. For months after the incident, I was bitter and became very defensive. I went to meetings suspicious of any potential discrimination against me. What I realized years after was that I was projecting a very negative attitude and some of the people I dealt with reacted towards my attitude.

Several years ago, I left a job after feeling helpless. I was frustrated with the changes in my department and the ambiguity of my role. I felt as if I was not heard, I was a “victim” and I was “helpless”. I thought the management did not care about my feelings. I had made them “villains” in my story. The problem was I did not share how I felt with my supervisors. They were shocked when I announced I was leaving. Learning from that lesson, I vowed to become more assertive and get out of the “victim” mentality. In the end, I had to advocate for myself. Certainly, the conversations I’ve had when I expressed my displeasure were not easy, but positive results came out of them. Oftentimes, my supervisors were not fully aware of the issues I had.

It truly is amazing how much of a difference the types of stories we tell ourselves. There are times when I have had to consciously change the story I tell myself in heated conversations so as not to get myself into situations I might regret later. Even when I had to make up positive ones.

I am generally an optimist and so I tend to look at my life from a positive perspective, but life is not always rosy and it’s those times when I have to remind myself to think positive, that I am not a victim, I’m not helpless and other people are not so bad.

I attended the Pilipino Graduation Ceremony at UC Santa Barbara last Friday. It was an intimate ceremony which provided the 21 graduating seniors, both Filipino-Americans and students involved with the Filipino-American community at UCSB, opportunity to celebrate their accomplishments and to recognize the contributions of their families.  Even those who are stoic in nature would have been moved by the tributes and gratitude expressed by the students.  Listening to the heartfelt speeches and watching the pride by their families were exactly what I needed to remind myself of why I chose to come back to higher education.  It was also a reminder of what really gets me excited and passionate about my job, which is supporting students. In my 16 years since turning professional, I have been able to develop relationships as a mentor to several students. These relationships have lasted even after they graduated.

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