Post the First

Just like writing a recommendation that won’t write itself, sometimes the best thing to do is to simply start getting words down.  Here blog post #1. Frankly, I don’t know where these posts are headed (I welcome suggestions), but not knowing the exact destination is a central theme of this whole “counselor-in-residence” experience.

I’m grateful for Lee Coffin’s continued creativity in getting me to Tufts.  In the end, he masterminded a job exchange:  assistant director Kerrin Damon and I are switching part-time jobs: she will experience life as a college counselor (with half a caseload), and I will have an opportunity to see how college admissions has changed in the last twelve years.

While I’m particularly interested in the impact of technology and increased volume of applications, my real curiosity should be answered next July: which one of us will be most eager to return to our former post.  Will Kerrin decide that the Elysian fields of college counseling are for her?  How much will I have missed the intensity of daily conversations and contact with one community of boarding and day students?

Speaking of volume, I’m already impressed by the size and strength of Lee’s admissions staff.  During the staff retreat in late June, twenty admissions officers sat around the table in Kennebunk, ME and it was quickly apparent that Lee has assembled an impressive bunch of AO’s.  Not only is the mix of experience and youth a seemingly ideal one, but I was also struck by how well everyone seemed to get along. In my admissions days a staff of eight or nine admissions officers seemed complicated enough.  But that is a story for another day….

Here I am, jumping in.  Heart first.