In this episode of Roompact’s ResEdChat, Crystal sits down with Aaron Lucier, Interim Director of Housing & Residential Life at the University of South Carolina Upstate. Aaron reflects on what mattered most, how the field has evolved, and the lessons learned along the way. From leadership and identity to the moments that sustained them, this conversation offers insight and guidance for the next generation of housing professionals.
Guest: Aaron Lucier (he/him)
Host: Crystal Lay (she/her)
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Roompact’s ResEdChat podcast is a platform to showcase people doing great work and talk about hot topics in residence life and college student housing. If you have a topic idea for an episode, let us know!
Transcript:
Crystal Lay:
Hello and welcome to another episode of Roompact’s ResEdChat podcast. My name is Crystal Lay. I’m your host and I use the she/her series pronouns and I’m very excited about our topic today. As I begin to think about my career, I thought I have a little bit of time before retirement, but I try to think about what’s my legacy? How has housing changed? Who are the people that I can reach out to and get some guidance or some thoughts about their time and have some thought?
My brain went all over the place and I really settled on this idea of who’s someone who’s retired or semi-retired that I can talk to and do this idea of a look back. What has your experience been? And the first person that came to mind, I was able to reach out to them. I’m very excited that they said yes. And so today we’re talking about being semi or retired from housing in that lookback piece. And so with that, very excited to have our guests introduce themselves.
Aaron Lucier:
Well, hello. Aaron Lucier. I use the he/him pronouns. I am currently the interim director of housing residential life at USC Upstate, but I did do my state retirement from East Carolina University about two years ago, going on almost three years ago, from about 28 and a half years of service at that institution. So the long haul at a state institution. And so, I consider myself retired from East Carolina, but still out there in the field and trudging along.
Crystal Lay:
Well, thank you for being here. So I want to start first, because I have so many questions even just from this intro you just gave. But I want to start with when you look back across your career in housing, you talked about over this 28 years plus, what feels most meaningful to you now?
Aaron Lucier:
I think the field itself. When I retired from East Carolina, I stepped away for about a year and did sales in a local practice. And so, I stepped away for a while and the field called me back. My desire to be part of the field, my desire to be in academia called me back. And so at the end of your career, you sometimes feel, I’m tired. I don’t want this anymore. I’m not feeling it anymore. And in some ways, sometimes you need a new set of challenges. And so going out there and doing sales for a while gave me a new set of challenges, but also told me, “You know what? I miss having an impact on students.”
“I miss the camaraderie. I miss the collegiality.” And so when this opportunity at Upstate came, I jumped at it. And so dove right back into a small program versus a big program. So a whole new set of challenges, a wonderful staff team, which were all new people I had to get to know. So all those newness was a refresh. So all the things I thought I was tired of, I found that I was engaged in again because it was new and a fresh, and it was a new problem and new set of factors I had to look at.
And it was all new. And so, while my experience at East Carolina certainly informed my decision making at Upstate, I had a lot of new things to learn and grow from. And that staff there has challenged me and pushed me in ways and the students have, that I never thought I would be doing again. And so that’s been awesome. So I think the field calling me back is the biggest lesson I got. It’s the most meaningful thing. I still love the field even after all these years.
Crystal Lay:
So I also like, you talked about this newness. You’re like, “Okay, I’m leaving.” And then you still wanted something to do. You’re like, I still want something to do. And you went into sales and they’re like, wait, I missed the students. I missed the work. And that drawback was, how do I reinvent? How do I stay with the work, but also have some newness so it feels a little fresh or different maybe?
Aaron Lucier:
Yeah, the freshness. I needed the freshness. I was in the same basic role at East Carolina for almost 17 years, and I love the place, but I have the feeling sometimes I was on remote, remote control. It’s opening. I know opening. I’ve done it 20 some years. I know this and I know that. And so I probably was not even open to new ideas sometimes in that position because I knew it, quote, I knew it. And therefore I needed that freshness. And like I said, this job, this interim position has challenged me in some amazing ways because I don’t know it.
And this school is a completely different set of factors and the players are all different and the students are … the population is very different. So all those newness has kept me on my toes and I think I’ve really enjoyed that. It’s been very refreshing to me. And I needed to let go of the old job to get there. And that was the hard part. Leaving something I did know so well is hard, incredibly hard.
Crystal Lay:
Well, thanks for being vulnerable there. I think you and I, our paths have been so different. I go a new place every four years and now I’m ready to stay, Aaron. I’m like, I’m not moving. I’m ready to be somewhere for 28 years.
Aaron Lucier:
And where that place is, is always surprising. I never intended to stay in Greenville, North Carolina for 20 some years and still live there here today. I found a local, fell in love and fell in love with the town and fell in love with him first and then, I think fell in love with the town and I have a place here. So Upstate wants me to stay there. And I’m like, my heart is back in Greenville. My relationship is back in Greenville, but my heart, my home, everything I have set up, my community is all here in Greenville. And so, I’m not surprised you’re finding some roots there, and so that’s not a bad thing.
Crystal Lay:
Okay. So a little bit earlier, you said that you’ve seen the housing profession change over the course of your career. What are some changes that have stood out the most to you?
Aaron Lucier:
Well, I think the current political environment is certainly a challenge. And I’d have to say there’s always been politics happening around, but the politicalization of higher education and the changes that has caused, that’s tough. It’s been tough on all of us. Basically, we’ve been told the whole segments of what we thought was important are no longer valued by the state and therefore our positions. And that’s been particularly hard on us that we’re working in state institutions, and that’s been hard.
I think also that I don’t … I think we were headed on a track for a long time that we were really professionalizing our field, that this was something that you were going to stay in forever. And this is … I remember I was talking to somebody 10 years ago, we were talking about having CEU credit requirements and really kind of formalizing our field. And then, wow, that was something different because now people view it as a position, maybe a stopover, a growth area, maybe somewhere they’re going to stay for a while, which is perfectly fine.
If they commit their five or 10 years, or if it’s two or three, that’s fine. But it’s different that you’re not looking at housing necessarily as a profession and a long-term. It’s part of maybe a longer academia career and it might be part of a longer student affairs career, but it isn’t your career, it isn’t your stopping point or your staying point. And that’s different because I think a lot of people viewed housing as what they wanted to do with their career before. And that’s been a change too.
I think the other last thing is … and I’ll even defend it a little bit, this idea that students have changed, they were always changing. I’ve been around long enough to see that they were always changing. What they’ve changed … some of the changes caused by COVID and some of the other things have made some of the situations a little bit more challenging, about conflict and conflict management, about community management and something like that.
But these are challenges that have occurred in different ways throughout my entire field. I just have to say this current batch, there’s some real challenges. And God bless them, thank God for challenges because we need those. That keeps us fresh. It keeps us changing, it keeps us growing. But some of the challenges, they’re out there and we come up, I’ve seen great podcasts that you guys have done on some of those changes. My gosh, they’re real, they’re real. So those changes are … changing student population is a real thing.
Crystal Lay:
Yeah, I definitely agree with you. And I imagine too, one of the changes, or I wonder if one of the changes has been about leadership. I’m going to make an assumption. Is there anything that you’ve learned during your career about leadership that you wish you understood earlier in your career?
Aaron Lucier:
I think one internal, and I’m going to go with one external. The one internal one is leadership is less about you and more about the people you’re leading. And one of the things that … we always sort of said, our master’s program never prepared us to be supervisors. Our master’s program never prepared us to lead people necessarily. And maybe that’s a message out there to those people in those programs still. We need to talk about supervision. We need to talk about those things more.
But I discovered leadership is far less about me and more about the people and getting to know their needs and getting to know them and what they’re doing and their goals and what’s happening with them. And so that’s leadership to me. And we’ve talked about this before, but hiring the right people to do a job, give them the tools they need to do that job, and then let them go be the professionals we hope them to be. That’s leadership. Leadership is about trust and that trust comes up and that trust goes down.
And I trust my staff and I need to trust my staff, and hopefully they trust me. Now, the external leadership lesson, let’s start talking about trust is one of the things that I’ve learned is your leader necessarily might not … Their first team that they have to be honoring and trustworthy too, might not be the leadership team you’re on. And so your vice chancellor reports to the executive team for the university. That’s his or hers first team that they’ve got to be loyal to and that they have to answer to.
It’s not your team or the student affairs leadership team. It’s not the housing leadership team. It’s their first team and their boss is the chancellor. And that goes right down to your director of housing or your associate vice chancellor. Their first team really is the team that they’re on with their supervisor. And that’s kind of a thing I don’t think I really thought about a lot for a long time. And so their loyalty and their energy that they have to sort of sometimes put across.
And sometimes when the priorities are different, like the housing team needs this, but their first team, the student affairs leadership team needs this, don’t be surprised that your boss is putting the things that the student affairs leadership team is asking for because that’s their first team. That’s the one they’re being held accountable to, and that’s the one that their supervisor is on. And that’s a real thing. And that was a big wake-up call for me and came very late in my career to realize that your supervisor is on a different team sometimes.
Crystal Lay:
That’s so powerful. I got chills because I didn’t learn that concept until my second directorship, this idea of first team. And I think we always talk about navigating or managing down or across and up, but we really aren’t explicit. I think about the politics. I always say shaking hands and kissing babies or being in alignment and having an understanding. I’ll share a very quick example. I asked my new supervisors, I do a report and I said, “Hey, what are your expectations of me or what do you want to see in the next six months as I take on this new role?”
And then you know what I did? I shared it with my direct reports. I said, I want to be really clear about, some of the acts are definitely coming from me and what I see we need. And also some of them are coming from my supervisors because I want them to see that I am in alignment and be transparent when it makes sense about where some of these shifts or pivots may be coming from. So I like this idea you talk about of the first team. And again, I don’t think we talk about that often.
I want to transition now, Aaron, to talking about, I think housing, especially because you live where you work and even when you move off campus, we spend a lot of time together and I feel like it can become such a core part of our identity. You stepped out for a year, but as you keep thinking about, at some point when you fully step away, what’s that like for you to … The time period you had, you talked about missing folks, but what is it like to think about potentially leaving behind a core part of your identity?
Aaron Lucier:
It is for me, a really core part of my identity. I think maybe … and I’m going to put a little gender on it. I think for men, particularly their career paths tend to be even more so, and culturally, no wrong or right there. I think I’ll decide as somebody who doesn’t have children that I don’t have … I have lots of roles. I’m still a brother, I’m a son, my mom is still with us and all that. So I got all these different roles, but I don’t have the role of a parent.
I don’t have some other roles. And therefore my career path was critically important to me. It was hard and I didn’t realize how hard it was to step away. I gave plenty of notice about leaving East Carolina, and I was well served by the fact that there was a professional in our office that was sort of going to step in my shoes, and I was grateful for that because she’s done an amazing job there and she’s really kind of knocked it out of the park and I’m happy for her.
But as I was leaving, I was being stepped out of some meetings and stuff like that, and there was hurt like, why am I not in the room anymore? Why am I not making these decisions anymore? And I kind of, up here, understood it in my head, but my heart was like, “Oh my God, this is killing me.” And I probably took the job in sales in part because I wanted to … So I literally had that job. I was off for a week and started that job. So I retired off for a week and started a new job because I needed that.
I needed to say, “I’m this now.” So I’m this salesperson at this company and people asked me what I was doing, I was like, “I’m going to work for this company.” And so, I think for that, I need it. So I’m not ready for the retired, retired. So I can’t quite answer that. I could tell you it’s not going to be easy. I could tell you it’s going to take some time in processing. I could probably say that I don’t know if I’ll ever fully step away from everything. So there will be some volunteer role, there’ll be something going on.
Because A, my spouse will clearly tell me I need that because a half million have done house projects are not going to be a lifestyle for him, but at the same time, I also need … I think I need that identity rock. So I’m going to probably keep doing something as long as I can. And that’d be in higher education or volunteering or being the greeter at Walmart, I don’t know, but I’m going to do something. Does Walmart even have greeters anymore? I don’t even know that, but I’m going to do something.
Crystal Lay:
Right. Maybe in East Carolina, the greeting part feels like such a part of that culture. Just welcome. I don’t know.
Aaron Lucier:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, maybe I’m the person that checks your sales list at Costco. I don’t know whatever the new equivalent is. Well, Greenville would have to get a Costco for me to do that and I’m on board with that, so yes.
Crystal Lay:
I love that you highlighted you are a housing professional and, there are so many roles and I think sometimes that gets lost because it can become your professional identity and your entire identity. And so you name, you’re like, “I’m a spouse, I’m a son, X, Y, Z.” There’s more to you. And I think you just imparted a really valuable lesson on folks who are tuning in because there’s so many other pieces and how do you make sure you find something that’s fulfilling in addition to this work that we do in housing because it’s so easy for it to become the only thing or the most important thing. I don’t know.
Aaron Lucier:
Well, and I think that’s part of the live-in element because it does overshadow probably even more than a lot of other parts of student affairs. We also ask a lot of times new professionals to leave their region and come to a new region. So their job becomes very central to them. And I encourage you to find the life outside your job in the community. If you’re a dancing nut, find a dance group. If you’re a reading nut, find a reading group.
If your spirituality needs … your cup needs filling, find a church or a community that fills it. I mean, I cannot stress that enough. You cannot be that single platform person because of that. And I’ve been there, I’ve done it myself. And so that’s a lesson hard learned because if the job ain’t going right, and that’s the only thing you have as an identity and the bells aren’t ringing and the pistons ain’t firing and it’s going badly, that means your entire life is going badly and what’s that and what’s that feel like?
So multiple identities helps shelter you from a little bit of that. And hopefully, if your work identity is having a rough month, some of those other identities are filling in and filling your cup back up because I’ve been there. I was in a situation where I didn’t have community, I was off at a job, not East Carolina, but off at a job and it was not going well. And I made horrible decisions based off that because I was just not happy. And that unhappiness caused me to make unhappy decisions and basically got me fired at some point.
So as a student affairs professional, I made that bad decisions because I didn’t realize how unhappy I was because I was being a single-sided person, that this job is everything to me and that’s not going to be good.
Crystal Lay:
I’m so sorry that that was the experience. And I think you’re not alone in that because I think it’s like if you feel like a different person, if you can’t recognize yourself, and I think this work can do that to you, toxicity. And I think it’s not just people talk about toxic relationships, but there’s also toxic workplaces. And so how do you find a place where, again, it’s like having community is very crucial. And also, how do you find a workplace that you remember who you are and what your values are. So I want to-
Aaron Lucier:
Just real quick on that toxic part, an environment that is toxic to you might be golden heaven to somebody else too. So we all have our own version of what’s toxic to us. So people throw that toxic work environment out there. It might’ve been toxic to … No, it might be truly a work environment that’s toxic to every … Those exist. I do believe they exist, but sometimes that toxicity is related to you. This environment’s toxic to me because of how I feel about the position or my ethical background or just how I like to work or the students or this doesn’t work or whatever else.
So there might be some elements that’s toxic to you that might be green, gold and heaven to somebody else. And so we just need to remember that. You don’t need to sort of say, “Well, that place was awful to me.” They might’ve been awful to you if there was directed anger, that’s awful to you. But if it was just not a good fit, then just walk away and find something … Well, I know it’s easier to say that, but hopefully you can get away from there and find someplace that does fill your cup up, that does feel home to you.
That sort of golden green feel, what you’re looking for, and then somebody else is going to find that other job and fill that role.
Crystal Lay:
Yeah, I appreciate that distinction and that clarity because sometimes it’s oil and water. There’s a values misalignment that this is what they’re about, this is what I’m about. So you are completely correct with that alignment piece. So I want to take advantage of this moment because you’re sharing all this wisdom for our new professionals and even for me, a little more seasoning, but I want to keep going. What additional advice would you offer to new professionals who are thinking, “I think I want to do this for a long time. I want to be in housing for my entire career. I want it to be fulfilling.”
Aaron Lucier:
Build those relationships, nurture relationships. We all talk about we’re looking for that mentor relationship. I don’t think I’ve had one particular mentor. I have some people that have mentored me, but I wouldn’t call them necessarily my mentors. And so first thing, our national conference like ACUHO-I is a family reunion to me. I know lots of people. I know lots of people in the exhibit hall. I know lots of people in the hallways and that feeds me and that’s because I’ve built relationships over time there.
So take advantage of that. If you can’t go to the national, go to your regional and have that feed you and build those networks, they will pay off advice, materials, networking, the next job, sounding off that this is the right place for me or this is the wrong place for me. Whatever else is going to be really valuable. I also think build those campus relationships. Don’t walk into somebody’s office the first time asking for something because you’ve never met them before.
Go out and meet folks and understand what they need, what’s driving their workday, what’s their challenge points? How can you help them do a better job? How can you help them and then, they can help you later? Some of us have meal plans and use them strategically. A free lunch will get you a long way with a lot of people on campus, and I’m not afraid to use it. I’ve got the card, let’s go. So be strategic. And I don’t mean negative strategic about relationships. I got to figure out what I need from this person, and don’t make it purely transactional, but get to know them.
A, that widens your network again once again. So it’s not just the housing people that you’re relying on, but it also means that you can be the person who knows people. And if you’re going to be there over time, once again, you don’t want to always be the person who walks in only people’s offices with a problem that day. And that goes all the way from the groundsperson on your campus to the vice chancellor or chancellor even. My surprising thing of being at a much smaller school currently is I see the chancellor all the time, and that’s not something I’m used to.
And I love it and it’s different, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a tight relationship with a chancellor like I do at my current institution, and that’s kind of different. But build those relationships. That’s one of the biggest keys. It’s about, hopefully you’re in the field because you’re about people. So use those people skills with your students, but also use those people skills with your fellow professionals and across the board.
Crystal Lay:
Yes. The relationships and community is so important. And ACUHO-I is how we met, right? And I so treasure that connection because I think you’re fantastic. And so getting out there and connecting with people and just being brave and saying hello could really take you far as an introvert. I am an introvert and it’s scary. However, my mom would say a closed mouth doesn’t get fed.
Aaron Lucier:
And my husband busts on me all the time because I talk to strangers in the Walmart line too.
Crystal Lay:
You’re prepping to be a greeter. I love it.
Aaron Lucier:
Yeah. There you go. Well, I really do believe in the motto, a stranger is a friend you just haven’t met yet.
Crystal Lay:
I love that. I love that. So now, we’re going to pivot a little bit. I want to talk about the hard seasons. And I think you talked a little bit earlier. What sustained you when you had those harder seasons of doing this work in housing?
Aaron Lucier:
Those relationships that I nurtured before. Sometimes you’re giving out in relationships and sometimes you’re taking back in. And there’s been times where I really needed to take back in. And like I said, I don’t think it was a purely transactional, but you look back on it and you’re like, I was getting more out of that than I was giving in and I needed that. But there was other times where I gave more and it’s never quite equal. And so that’s good to recognize that it’s okay to be a little bit like, I’m going to take in a little bit here.
There’s been several points in my life and my career where my professional family has rallied around me. I’ve had some really tough times. We all have. If you do something for 28 years, you’re going to have good days and bad. And I’ll bring up a specific example. We always think about August, what August means to a housing professional. My father died the first week of August, a few years back, and I did not know what I was going to do and didn’t know how I was going to handle it.
And I didn’t need to because my staff team, the people around me were like, “Don’t worry about this. You focus on this.” And I mean, I was like, “This is the first week of August. I need to be here.” They were like, “No, you need to worry about you.” So that was that coming back to that. But those professional hard times too, use your networks, find out where they are, use resources like podcasts like this and things like that just to listen to something that was going to be helpful.
Use your outside networks too, like I said, if the job ain’t going well … and it might just be that temporary time that it’s just not a great week or a great month. Those can happen. And it doesn’t mean the job is bad or things are awful. That might be the week that you’re hitting your dance club or you’re hitting your gym hard or you’re like, “I’m not missing Bible study this week,” or whatever it is, find those things that refill you. Call your mom. I mean, she’d appreciate it.
Call your mom and just say, “Mom, I just need to talk and just say yes for a while.” Hopefully, your parents are your cheerleaders and mine have always been my cheerleaders. My spouse is a social worker, so he’s really helpful for that. He keeps me real too. Sometimes he’s like, “Aaron, you’re being an idiot.” And I’m like, “Oh, okay.” But use those relationships, use those resources, find those things that refill your cup. If it’s not work that month, find what else is going to refill your cup.
But also know that if those bad times are happening more than the good, then it might be time. You might have loved the place or you still love the place on some level, but it ain’t filling your cup anymore and the position isn’t or the students aren’t, or you’ve got more … they’ve taken away all your student time and it’s all admin time and that’s not what you’re in the job for, then it might be time to put out that shingle and say, “I’m looking.” Change your field, your rap on your Indeed, whatever. LinkedIn.
Crystal Lay:
LinkedIn.
Aaron Lucier:
Yes. Yeah. I’m looking for work. The infamous, I’m looking for work opportunities. Change your status on LinkedIn and put yourself out there in the world.
Crystal Lay:
Thank you for sharing what you did. And it’s just a reminder. We are full people and have full lives and you never know what folks are holding or caring or navigating through, and just be kind, right? Give grace and be kind and show up for yourself, A, and then for each other as best as we can. So again, so many powerful reminders. I’m like, I’m going to call my mom once we’re done chatting.
So as you retire or you’ve had colleagues who have retired, I don’t know if there’s just collective hope that folks who have recently retired have for the next generation of housing professionals or hopes that you have, but what do you hope the next generation carries forward in our field?
Aaron Lucier:
I hope they have the experiences that we did, that the housing was transformative to them and they want to give that to others. And I think I’m hoping that some of the political stuff, the pendulum will swing the other way and we’ll get back to some of the things that we valued from a diversity and understanding of the inclusion issues and how valuable that can be. So I’m hoping that some of the hard times we’re having … Unfortunately, I don’t think some of the politicalization of a higher ed is going to change.
Some of the things that have changed is permanent. We just need to accept that. But how we navigate that and how it impacts the daily job, I think it’s going to change. I look back on my career and a lot of things happened during that time. I mean, let’s face it, email was a new thing when I started, and I know the new professionals are going, “What?” And I’m like, “Yeah, we were still waiting for inner campus mail where a person dropped by memos and things like that.”
Emails was new and fresh when I started at East Carolina University. Emails was new. And so those things changed, but we also worried about students back then. Is putting internet in the student’s room going to make them not want to leave their room? Remember those conversations?
Crystal Lay:
Yes.
Aaron Lucier:
And is cable TV going to make the students never want to leave their room? What happened to cable TV people? It’s gone. So you get what I’m saying? There’s been other challenges. There’s been other crisis moments. I don’t know if they’ve been so tightly packed as they are currently. So I’m hoping that we were able to unpack them and we’re able to … What we value in the field is going to remain. There’s been other fiscal crisises. There was other challenges along the way.
We’ve cut programs, we’ve added them back, we’ve cut programs, we’ve added them back. So these things happen in cycles. But I’d have to say this particular cycle and all the different things happening at once is pretty crazy, but I’m hopeful on my end that I know from my experience, they don’t last forever. So I guess I could say to you is hopefully I can tell you this too shall pass. This is not a permanent state. Now, I can’t guarantee what the next state is, but this is not a permanent state of higher education.
It’s not a permanent state of housing because things don’t stay stagnant in this area. So it might feel a little uncomfortable right now, but just remember it’s going to change too. And if it’s feeling particularly comfortable right now, it’s still going to change.
Crystal Lay:
Yes. Yeah, I started … I was an RA in 2000, the year 2000 when we thought the world was going to end. We’re like, “The truck’s going to turn over and Y2K.”
Aaron Lucier:
Or the fire alarms is going to stop working if you get your money out of the ATM because they’re not going to work tomorrow? Nothing happened, people.
Crystal Lay:
Yes. So as we close out our time, my final question for you, Aaron, is are there any tools or resources that you would recommend to anyone who wants to learn more about any of the pieces that you share today or anything that’s a little bit more focused on retirement? Any tools or resources you would offer up?
Aaron Lucier:
I didn’t find a lot, when I was even going through it. So that’s one of the reasons I’m excited about doing this. I hope I can be a resource for folks and other … You probably, even as a professional, just think about some of the folks that have left your field or retired or switched fields, and just remember you can still call them. You can still reach out to them. And I think I’d be honored if somebody still reached out to me and said, “Aaron, I need to talk to you about something.”
So A, feel free to give them a call. I think people want to stay engaged and stuff like that. I do think for those people looking at retirement, that is overshadowing. I think some of the resources I used was, like I said, some personal experiences, but it was some of those lessons and conversations with our people that I knew that just went the year before or those times. So as you hear about them retiring, you call them, “Hey, how was that first six months?”
And they’ll tell you, it was easy. It was hard. I haven’t done anything with it because I picked up another job. I’m doing an interim somewhere or whatever else, but those realizations, they can tell you that and share that with you. And I also think there’s a whole group. Housing programs and schools and institutions grew up a lot during my time earlier in the late ’90s and the early 2000s. A lot of programs grew up exponentially during that time. So I think there is going to be a large group of folks retiring in the next few years.
And hopefully, we can share and hold each other’s hands as we take these leaps. Hopefully some of those professional relationships outlast our time in the profession. So I encourage you to just not drop your networks, keep your text groups, keep your network groups. If the institution allows you to keep your email address, I still have my East Carolina email address. I don’t check it enough, but I still have it, which is awesome because having an email address for basically 30 years of your life, you don’t want to give it up.
But I think we could probably do more and talk about this because it’s happening and it’s out there, but know that there is people out there that are willing to talk about it, give advice. So I can’t give you a link to something, but I just tell you to look through your internal list of folks and say, “You know what? I know somebody who just went through this.” And I think it’s probably the time to give them a call, take them to lunch and pick their brains.
Crystal Lay:
This has been absolutely wonderful. Thank you, Aaron, for sharing everything that you did. I know I’m leaving with a lot of cool insights and reflection moments that I want to do, and again, calling my mom, so thank you for spending time with us today.
Aaron Lucier:
Well, thank you. I’m very excited about it, because like I said, I think we could use some more resources about this, so this is an awesome thing to put out there. I’m happy we had this chat.
Crystal Lay:
And thank you all of you for hanging out with us today. If you have an idea for a topic or a person that you would like us to have here on Roompact ResEdChat, please reach out and let us know. Take care.
