by Demarcus Merritt, Sr.
It was a move-in night at the University of Florida. The heat had finally loosened its grip, families were beginning to depart, and most of the staff had rotated off for the evening. I was heading out, mentally already shifting toward rest, when I saw a family standing near the edge of the operation. They didn’t look angry. They didn’t look impatient. They looked distressed: the kind of look that tells you they’re not sure where to go next, who to ask, or whether anyone is still available to help.
I changed course and approached the family, asking if they needed help. It turned out that travel complications had caused them to miss their check-in window. Now, what I thought would be a quick check-in turned into a long process of walking them through their next steps, answering questions, helping them settle, and offering a sense of calm. When I finally left, it was well past 10 p.m. A couple of weeks later, my supervisor, Ryan Winget, asked me to stop by his office. He had an email pulled up on his screen and a smile on his face. He told me a family had written to share their gratitude for the “well-dressed staff member” who welcomed them so warmly late that night. Then he turned the screen toward me. Pride was written all over his face. I felt it too. Affirmed. Seen. Proud. And also . . . empty.
But what stayed with me even more than the email was what he said next: “I didn’t know you were staying that late. How are you doing . . . really?” That question landed differently. It reminded me that leadership isn’t just about showing up for the moment. It’s about noticing the people carrying it. It planted a seed early in my career, reminding me how so much of our work is built on an unspoken expectation that we should push through. And if we’re honest, most of us didn’t just absorb that expectation. We were taught it. “Push through” wasn’t background noise. It was a lesson. A lived experience. A model of professionalism that became folded into how we lead, how we supervise, and how we set expectations for our staff and our peers, in and out of the move-in season. It shaped what we praise. What we normalize. What we quietly expect people to endure in order to be seen as committed, capable, or worthy of trust.
These weeks are often framed as part of a tradition, almost like a rite of passage in our field. But more often than not, the work leaves staff exhausted, depleted, and merely surviving rather than thriving. Somewhere along the way, we normalized exhaustion as part of the job.
This push-through culture isn’t just intense; it’s unsustainable – which keeps bringing me back to the same question about how we transform this season from burnout to renewal. Not just for our students and their families, but for ourselves.
At UNC Greensboro, that question became impossible for me to ignore. A student staff member once wrote in a post-training survey, “It felt performative to spend half a day learning about wellness and self-care, only to be up until 3 a.m. doing door decks and prep.” I remember staring at that line – letting it tell the truth. We had packed a lot into two weeks. We told ourselves we were setting student staff up for success. In reality, we were overwhelming them before they ever got to do the work. So we made small, intentional shifts. Instead of cramming two semesters’ worth of training and development sessions into eight days of student staff training, we scaled training down to what they absolutely needed to know to open the halls and make them home for the residents who were about to arrive.
Other topics didn’t disappear. They were scaffolded and built into professional development sessions across the semester. Some were in-person and some were self-paced virtual offerings, but all were designed to meet student staff when they actually had the capacity to learn, reflect, and apply.
The difference was immediate. Sessions felt different. Engagement felt different. And when move-in arrived, staff showed up the entire week with noticeably higher energy. There was more presence, more positivity, and more genuine excitement to greet new and familiar faces. The air and the flow of the move felt lighter that year. Student staff were deeply committed and wanted to be there. And later in the year we saw something else. Retention of the material improved. Conversations deepened. Connections held. The work didn’t get smaller, but the way we built it became more human.
I’m at a point in my career when I’m no longer willing to romanticize depletion. I’m no longer impressed by how much we can carry, how long we can stay, or how quietly we can suffer. If we’re honest, some of what we call tradition is just unexamined harm wearing a familiar name. We inherited it. We repeated it. And somewhere along the way, we stopped asking who it was actually serving and who it was quietly sacrificing to suffer in applauded silence.
What I want more for myself, and for the people I work alongside, is a season that still stretches us but doesn’t empty us. A season where we don’t just open buildings, but tend to the people inside them, including ourselves. Where checking in becomes as routine as checking off a task. A season where we are just as intentional about how staff will feel at the end of August as we are about how opening day will run.
I don’t have this fully figured out. I don’t have an ultimate formula to fix this or a permanent resolution that is perfect. What I do have is a growing conviction that I should pay closer attention to the work around move-in. I’ve been brainstorming possibilities grounded in lived experiences, honest observations, and the shared wisdom that comes from the thinking-big-out-loud spaces with colleagues across my professional network. What’s emerging for me isn’t a checklist. It’s a different way of asking questions about how we design, lead, and care through high-intensity seasons. Sometimes it is not about searching for the perfect resolution or right answer. It’s about asking if we are asking the right questions.
I do know this: We get to decide what kinds of traditions we carry forward. We get to decide if the tradition will be helpful or harmful. We get to decide if it will stretch staff beyond exhaustion or sustain them with rest and restoration built in. We don’t need another season of proving how much we can take. We need a season of proving that we can lead differently.
Demarcus Merritt, Sr., is assistant director of residence life at George Mason University. First Person is an opportunity for ACUHO-I members to share more personal insights into the news and issues affecting campus housing and student affairs. Interested contributors should complete this form.
