The president asked a counselor, 'What are all these students doing here?' The counselor said, 'It's fall registration. Recently, I heard a story of a college president who walked into the counseling department and saw the hordes of students waiting in the lobby. We know that.Īs counseling faculty we also know that many of our colleagues and administrators on our own campuses do not fully recognize, understand, acknowledge or value what we really do. We are that powerful a force in many of our students' lives. We provide the ingredients that will never be explained through numbers and statistics that are so heavily relied upon by 'them' in measuring our success. We feel their pain, we rejoice in their victories-however small or large. We feel our students' journey as we guide them like sherpas up the Himalayan mountains. We are the lucky ones to witness first hand the enormous changes our students go through to attend class, to achieve simple goals, to transfer, and overcome unbelievable odds. In a nutshell, we are our students' advocates, teachers, mentors, healers, tutors, parents, sisters, brothers, holistic guides, diplomats, cheerleaders, academic and personal coaches, friends, politicians, and drill sergeants. We must wear a number of hats in accomplishing this mission and adapt quickly to the ever changing needs of our students. 'We' are the faculty on the front line who are counseling and educating the most diverse students on the planet in the largest educational system in the world. The reality for many counseling faculty is 'If we have to explain, we know you won't understand.' For the sake of this article, I am going to try to explain. Counseling faculty are consistently put on the defensive unlike other faculty on campus. 'They' want 'us' to explain why we need new positions to accommodate the growth happening at so many community colleges in the state. 'They' want 'us' to explain why we need retirement positions replaced with another full-time counseling position. 'They' want us to explain why our transfer numbers to CSU and UC are not rising more steadily. When I get around 'them,' I realize how absolutely complicated it is to explain the frontline truth that in the counseling 'us' world we know so well as faculty. In the last 20 months as your South Representative for the Academic Senate, I have had the opportunity to realize how this 'us and them' phenomenon in the biker world is oh so similar and prominent in the educational world within the California community colleges. There is an 'us' reality, and for those that don't understand, a 'them' reality. No words need to be spoken, no justifications for the choices made. There is a deep connection of bikers to bikers since within that subculture there is no need for explanation they share that mutual appreciation for that freedom of riding. Bikers have a hard time explaining 'that feeling' to folks who don't understand 'that.' In other words, if a biker gets into a situation when there is a need to explain 'it', then you just wouldn't understand 'it'.

It is meditation on wheels-words just cannot explain this 'feeling' better. The beauty of that 'feeling' makes everything else seem insignificant. Well, my husband opened my eyes to the biker world-the love of the outdoors, and the 'feeling' of freedom in riding on the open road. That saying is: `If I have to explain, you wouldn't understand.' What do I mean and how does it relate to riding a Harley Davidson motorcycle? There is a saying in the biker world (I mean the Harley Davidson world) that seems apropos to our state of affairs on the front line as community college counseling faculty.

You wouldn t understand