Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman: When we started this series, our vision was to share the day jobs of writers not teaching on the college level, perhaps the most common profession in our field. Poet Leona Sevick reached out to us, mentioning that she has a position at a college, but on the administrative side. These sorts of jobs have different challenges and rewards than teaching, and we were interested in sharing her take with our readers:
How would you describe what you do for your day job?
I am an academic administrator at a small private liberal arts college, which means I oversee our academic programs and operations and provide leadership to the academic deans, librarians, and faculty, as well as other staff who report to me. I manage people and budgets and infrastructure, entertain academic program changes, ensure accreditation compliance, liaise with our trustees and donors, and work with students and parents to resolve a variety of issues.
So that I never lose touch with what it’s like to be a faculty member, I still teach one course a year (I teach Asian American literature), and that is the best part of my day—hands down. I love my students and the ways they push me to be better at every aspect of my job. For the last year I’ve been elbows deep in the college-wide COVID-19 response, which has been difficult for everyone. Like many of us, I’ve learned more about immunology and safety protocols then I ever imagined I’d have to!
What do you enjoy about that job?
I attended a small liberal arts college as a first-generation, working scholarship student, and so I know firsthand what a profound impact this kind of intimate community can have on all students, especially those students who come to college underprepared and overcommitted. This work—our shared mission—is something I believe in, and that makes it easy to come to work everyday and to work hard.
Also, I have always enjoyed what many people casually describe as “problem solving.” When you work with capable professionals across a variety of disciplines and areas, as I do, you’re always interested in finding creative and efficient ways to help them do their work better, and that’s what I enjoy most about my job. Sometimes I must make hard decisions that affect people’s lives and livelihoods, and I try to do it with kindness and respect, but that work is never easy.
While I never set out to become an academic administrator (who does?), I like the variety of challenges this work offers.
How, if at all, does your day job inform—or relate to—your writing life?
My day job has trained me to accomplish a great deal in a short amount of time; I work fast and can hold quite a few strands of information in my head at one time. This ability is helpful when I’m writing. I can work on a single poem or a group of poems in a short sitting and come back to the writing with full focus.
I also engage with many kinds of people in my job who have a variety of needs and who challenge me in different ways, and it’s made me more observant, more flexible, and much more empathetic as a person and as a poet. I tend to try and exert too much control over my words. My job reminds me that sometimes I need to abandon that control and to trust where the words lead me.
While I have a very public job, I am very private about my personal life, which is a challenge for me both as a poet and as a person who represents the college in public settings. I don’t know that I’ll ever become fully comfortable in these roles.
What creative projects are you working on right now?
I just returned from a two-week residency where I completed revisions to my second full-length collection of poems—one that’s considerably more ambitious and riskier than my first. I’m both terrified and excited about pushing it out into the world.
Leona Sevick is the 2017 Press 53 Poetry Award Winner for her first full-length book of poems, Lion Brothers, and her recent work appears in Orion, Birmingham Poetry Review, and Blackbird. She was named a 2019 Walter E. Dakin Fellow for the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and serves as advisory board member of the Furious Flower Black Poetry Center. Sevick is provost and professor of English at Bridgewater College in Virginia, where she teaches Asian American literature.
