Real People Profiles: Jill Randles
I’m asking some of the people you might encounter on the UMBC campus, including students, faculty, staff and alumni, to answer a few questions about themselves and their experiences. These are their responses.
Hometown:I don't have one. My Dad was career Army.
Q: How long have you been at UMBC?
A: This is my 19th year.
Q: What is your current title (job or student organization position)?
A: Assistant Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education.
Q: In 12 words or less, what role(s) do you play on campus?
A: Working with colleagues, I develop programs and opportunities that support student success in the transition to college.
Q: What aspect of your UMBC role(s) do you enjoy most?
A: My work requires that I work closely with students, faculty, and staff on a broad range of initiatives. I love the variety of people with whom I work and also the variety of tasks with which I am blessed to be involved.
Q: What is the most important or memorable thing you learned in college/have learned at UMBC?
A: In college, I learned that often our perceptions are not accurate. One has to be careful about making judgments without having all of the information, and that the information on which you base your decision should be information you gather. Just because someone you know has an experience, that may or may not be a good one, does not mean your experience will be the same. Give people and opportunities a chance, try them yourself, get out of your comfort zone because, if you don't, you can't possibly know what you are missing or make a meaningful contribution that can help to improve something.
Q: Complete this sentence: "I am a big fan of __________"
A: Horses and riding.
Q: Do you have any UMBC stories, little-known facts about UMBC, favorite spots on campus, or anything else you’d like to share?
A: Years ago we were sitting at a table celebrating a staff member's retirement. I think the assumption by some of the students who had worked with her was that she did not go to college. Well...she did. She attended a local private college and graduated with a degree in History. When she shared this and most of the students jaws dropped to the ground (perhaps an example of a perception based on an assumption) she said..."Yes, I went to college when the goal of an education was to learn how to learn, not just to get a job. The tools I developed during my years in college have served me well in a variety of positions....they are transferable skills and I learned how to access and apply them." This is something I have never forgotten.
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I’m asking some of the people you might encounter on the UMBC campus, including students, faculty, staff and alumni, to answer a few questions about themselves and their experiences. These are...
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Confessions
When I’m standing in front of a room full of people—something I do a lot in my job—I never know what to do with my hands. It’s not so bad when I’m speaking, and can use a gesture to emphasize a point. But when I’m standing next to a co-presenter or co-instructor and watching the other person talk, my hands feel like little beacons of awkwardness. I tend to be most comfortable sticking them in my pockets, but when I see others do that they look nervous and goofy. When I let them fall at my sides, I imagine that I must look stiff, like a robot. When I cross my arms across my chest, I imagine that I look wound-up and self-protective. When I clasp one hand with the other behind my back, I imagine I must look pretentious, or just contorted. As thoughts like these distract me from what the other person is saying, I’ll sometimes move my hands and arms from one position to another and back again, and I imagine they look like the blades of a helicopter whirling around me.
My insecurity in those moments is a throwback to an earlier time in my life, when my acute awareness of my own awkwardness was sometimes socially paralyzing. Filled with anxiety and self-doubt, I shied away from people at gatherings because I imagined that my trying to connect with them would be experienced by them as an unwanted intrusion. I yearned to understand the social rules that most other people seemed to have mastered, and was painfully conscious of my unwitting transgressions.
Eventually I became more confident and less self-conscious. In the meantime, my struggles to navigate my social world had some surprising benefits. I began to see things: subtle patterns in interactions and situations. I started to find that certain books and articles about leadership, civic engagement and education really spoke to me because I recognized, from personal experience and lifelong observation, the human dynamics they described. When I became a community organizer and began pulling a variety of people together to solve complex problems, I was able to draw on years of insights gained largely from trying very hard to look a little less like a dork.
Now I work at a job I love, and to which I feel called. It involves helping students to transcend their own sources of self-doubt, figure out who they are and what they care about, and discover their capacity to pull people together—navigating the nuances of complex interactions—to make a difference. And every single day I use and teach what I learned, and continue to learn, from struggling through my own doubts.
Every experience counts in life, not just the ones you can list on a resume. Anxiety and failure contain the seeds of wisdom and empowerment. If you can, be thankful for them, and embrace them for all they’re worth, even as you try to overcome them. And if you have an idea about what I should do with my hands when I’m standing next to the person presenting, feel free to share. I’m ready to learn.
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When I’m standing in front of a room full of people—something I do a lot in my job—I never know what to do with my hands. It’s not so bad when I’m speaking, and can use a gesture to emphasize a...
http://cocreateumbc.blogspot.com/2010/10/confessions.html
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