In God's time

One of the daily privileges in my current role at Xavier University as chair of the Department of Health Services Administration is to work one-on-one with students in their quest for an administrative residency.

Xavier is one of 68 accredited graduate HSA programs in the United States, one of two accredited programs in Ohio and one of only seven elite programs nationally that still requires the 8-12 month administrative residency. The residency makes our program a three-year journey toward the master's of health services administation degree. Ask any of our 1,500 alumni about the most memorable and worthwhile part of their graduate work in our program, and every person will cite the year-long residency. While many other programs require a 90-day or six-week residency, Xavier still maintains the entire year. I join my fellow alumni in appreciating my administrative residency year as unique, unparalleled, and formative.

So it's no wonder that our second-year students think about residency opportunities from the beginning of the program; they start applying at the beginning of the second-year and agonize from that day forward until a residency offer is made – and accepted. It is these worried, fretting, anxious young men and women with whom I work. It's true – every Xavier MHSA student has always gotten a residency. It's true – we have plenty of residency opportunities for consideration. And it's also true that we have wonderfully generous alumni who enjoy serving as residency preceptors and couldn't be more helpful in offering residency opportunities.

That's all adult-speak from experienced persons who have confidence. Translate that into the real world of our students, most of whom carry the natural anxieties of being graduate students who diligently maintain their rigorous studies and who live in an "answers right now" generation. Patience may be a virtue, but that’s for the older generation and how they think.

Many a student has sat with me, soul-searching as to what could have made a residency interview go better or lamenting why a classmate received a particular residency offer instead. I turn on my broken-record response: "It’s all about fit. There's a place for you and it's just not at X. God has a plan for you."  The student looks at me, disbelieving.

Of course, I believe that totally. There is a plan for each of us. And oftentimes it's not what we would pick for ourselves in the "Why in the world wasn't I selected since really wanted to go there?" reality. There's a better place ahead. And the students really do end up believers – eventually.

[Sr. Nancy Linenkugel is a Sylvania Franciscan sister and chair of the department of Health Services Administration at Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio.]