Today marks one year ago exactly to when the first episode of The Student Affairs Spectacular Podcast (let's call it SA Podcast for short) premiered. Since then, we've had almost 50 awesome episodes with student affairs professionals all over the country (and even abroad in Canada). I've learned a lot from these great people about our work with college students, and have also learned a lot about myself. I wanted to share with you all some of my reflections and lessons learned from this first year.

Preparation

A big lesson I've learned after a year of producing, hosting, and editing this podcast has been the value of preparation. When we started this endeavor, we had just began sourcing guests and kept pace well with our weekly episodes. However, there were certain times last year (especially when I was in full fledged job search mode or our team was away at conferences) that we had to scramble to get episodes. We also had some technical issues get in the way of keeping up with our weekly schedule. It was nice to take a break for the winter holidays as it allowed me to reset and get ahead of the schedule to where now I have episodes lined up for weeks in advance already recorded. The whole process has been far more enjoyable and less stressful this year due to my intentional effort put in to preparing ahead of time.

Conversation

The whole premise of the SA Podcast is fun, engaging, and relevant conversations with and for student affairs folks. I would not have ever considered myself a conversationalist but this show has made me into one more and more with each week. The quality of the show hinges on my asking of good questions, validating answers, and keeping a good flow going with each dialogue. I like to think I've done an alright job with this, and nevertheless, I've seen the benefits start to spill over into my non-podcasting life. I talk to students and colleagues all the time in my day job as well as my partner at home and I know the universal skills I mentioned before have come in handy. I listened more intently and I ask questions more purposefully. While I still have a lot of room for growth, I've seen a positive impact already in terms of how I talk to people, am I'm very grateful for that.

Collaboration

The SA Podcast couldn't happen without the help of my fellow team members. Tom and I have hosted together as well as hosted our own episodes of the show, and I've interviewed some amazing people in our field that I look up to solely based on connections through Tom or the confidence I've built to reach out to people on my own. Sabina also is the community manager extraordinaire who helps get the episodes out every week and promoted to our audience. I'm very grateful to have their support and assistance as well as the opportunity the do this. It is a dream come true and I'm excited to do every episode. I couldn't do it alone so both Tom and Sabina deserve a big shout out.

I hope to keep providing engaging content and to keep learning about myself from the SA Podcast for years to come. Thanks to all those that listen and if you haven't checked it out yet, go do it now!

Thanks for stopping by!