Join our hosts and special guest, Mary Pat, as we discuss how to find balance in our busy lives and be confident that we are more than our 9-5.

How do you separate what you do on day-today basis with who you are at home or in other capacities?
What are some of the assumptions that you’ve encountered about the role of work in our daily lives?
What are some helpful suggestions you have for people seeking to find balance in their work/life?

Transcript:
- Hello and welcome to the "What's Career Got To Do With It" podcast where we hope to provide a space for honest conversation and information that encourages the listener to take the next steps in their career journey. Wherever you are at in this process, we hope this episode will meet you with affirmation, guidance, and maybe some laughs along the way. On today's episode, we are joined by special guest, Mary Pat McMahon, Vice Provost and Vice President of Student Affairs, as we discuss an answer or many to the question, who are we beyond the nine to five? Woohoo! I don't know, who are we? What do we do?

- We are the world.

- What do we even do beyond the nine to five? Our guest has just hopped in here.

- Let's start with good morning. Welcome. Welcome to the fun house.

- Am I supposed to start answering that question?

- Oh, sure, if you want to, yeah.

- I mean, is this like the meta? Who are we really and does it matter?

- Oh, it could be.

- Is it?

- We could dive deep in there, yes, absolutely.

- Maybe a warmup conversation before the deep, deep?

- Sure, yeah, like what do we do?

- We, me?

- Yeah.

- Okay. So what do I do? So I always think that if I had a Twitter handle or an X handle, which I do not have, that I think of my little mom, you know, educator, and then I actually there is a media personality I really don't like, and I'd be like, person who really doesn't like this. As like my top three things. Yeah, so I'm sort of, I am, what do I do? So I run a household with young people, a cat, a dog, an older person, and a spouse. And so like Scent Comms at home, and then I try to be Scent Comms and a partner here on campus around everything related to the student experience. So it's a constant, for me, the integrator separator thing. Whereas, you know, are you at work right now? Are you at home right now? There is no way I could pull off the mostly effort to pull things off that I do if I didn't have a very integrator approach to it. I don't separate very much.

- And I think that's almost, for me, I can't even think of doing that because my training is, I was an athlete, so it was always flip the switch. And so we had this metaphorical switch that we would go onto the field with, and we'd be a completely different person. How do you go about integrating life in that way?

- So this morning, I needed my 83 year old mother to wake up, come over, and wait for the plumber. And this threw an extra degree of difficulty. All mornings are challenging. There's a seventh grader, there's a ninth grader, there are animals. And then when you add in go and get my mom who lives around the corner and getting her ready to go to sort of meet the plumber at 8:30 , then we're really talking a different kind of, sort of stay focused on the goal and keep everybody moving, right? And so, for me, it's about anticipating and planning well week to week, having a moment on the weekend particularly of sort of here's the week, here's the night events, here's who's got school teacher conferences, here's the groomer appointment for the dog. And then not getting too committed to that schedule being perfect, right? And it's a real art. I mean, I'm looking and everybody's nodding 'cause everybody knows this. It is such an art to sort of plan well, prepare for the unexpected. I was a college athlete. It has always helped my entire life that I had the experience of the bus doesn't go until we're all there. The bus leaves at 5:45 in the morning, and you better be there at 5:35 so that there's no