Missouri Academy Staff Years 1 & 5

I'm sure you're all aware of this already, but Facebook has an "On This Day" feature where it shows you your Facebook activity on that day of the year. So, it could be a status from two years ago, a few walls posts from other people from four years ago, and then a life event five years ago. Today's On This Day included two photos from different years that definitely got me to reflect. Here, I'll post them:

The top one is the staff I was on at the end of my first year at the Missouri Academy (i.e. five years ago). The bottom photo is the staff from last year right after the Graduation Banquet. Now, the Missouri Academy pretty much holds graduation the same weekend every year, and with it being that season, it's not a huge surprise that end-of-the-year photos would be popping up recently. Technically the first photo wasn't taken May 30. It was taken a couple of days earlier and just uploaded on May 30 since I was posting a lot of photos from that month. However, like I said before, the fact that both of them popped up today just had me reflecting.

The first thing is that I'm the only person in both photos. In the four years between photos, every other Residential Counselor and Graduate Assistant changed, as well as my supervisor (the Director of Student Achievement which became the Director of Student Success) and a new Director of Counseling. To be fair, almost all of the Missouri Academy roles *not* featured in either photo didn't change hands in that time, so that was where the continuity came from (not just me). It's also a reminder that the RC staff shrank from seven to five over the years due to budget restrictions.

The second thing that comes to mind is my smile. Obviously, these photos were taken in different contexts. The top one was right after we took a bunch of photos with the students on the Wednesday of the last week (or so), whereas the bottom one was right after the banquet where we recognized all of the students' accomplishments and another RC and I were recognized since we were leaving the Academy. So, it's not a huge surprise that my smile in the top photo looks like a "say cheese" smile and the bottom one is genuine. The team dynamic of RCs changed every year as people joined and left the staff (or even just changed through the passage of time), but the staff I was a part of my final semester (including my two supervisors/mentors) was a team that really clicked and was so much fun to be a part of.

I'm not going to wax poetically since it's already very late, but rest assured, a lot happened between these two photos. I do think I grew a lot as a professional and as a person while at the Missouri Academy, and that was in part to every student, colleague, and peer that I met along the way. I've been trying to reflect on my time in Missouri, although a lot of my day has been spent catching up on lost sleep or focused on grad school work. There's a 15-year reunion happening in August, and I just hope I can make it work with that grad class. It would be nice to see the place again and now be filled with completely new faces.

Tomorrow is World No-Tobacco Day and What You Think Upon Grows Day. With all of my thoughts about the Missouri Academy, I wanted to end this entry with a song:

DFTBA