Tuesday, January 22, 2019

Day 197

Despite the flexibility that round 2 of my blogging challenge is giving me, I need to be posting more than I have been if I want to finish before my summer classes start. Oops!

I'm currently reading Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education by Nathan D. Grawe as homework for my University Enrollment Management class. I allowed myself to take it a little too easy over the long weekend, but I am getting caught up. I am also practicing using my new gel highlighters that don't bleed through the page. As you can see from the photo below, my technique isn't quite there yet, but I'm working on it.

In the chapter about the Higher Education Demand Index, or HEDI, the author acknowledges that college enrollment prediction models can be imperfect for a variety of reasons, which you are more than welcome to read about for yourself (I'll loan you my book after this semester!), but he also writes that while we need to accept that our projections will be imperfect, there is still value in making them.  Specifically, he says, "Our inability to foresee perfectly should not be an argument against looking ahead." I think that idea can apply to anyone, so I wanted to share it here.

While I'm not one to actively avoid looking to the future, I sometimes fail to plan ahead too far in the future simply because I get caught up in the here and now so easily. The scheduling assignment for my Traditions of Inquiry class is helping me think more about the future and how my actions today can influence the next day, week, month, and even year, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little overwhelmed when I consider that it could be my job to plan for a generation of college students 15 years in advance based on some data. I'm more excited than overwhelmed, but it certainly puts my role as a future administrator or researcher in perspective. 


Something that made today great: The weather was lovely!
Time I woke up: 8:11 am

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