Maintaining Client Boundaries: Holiday Edition
Yes, it was 90-something degrees today, but GUYS - it’s only four months until the holidays!
I know, I know, I sound like I’m a department store executive. But I loooooove the holiday season. Love everything about it. The decorations, THE MUSIC, the parties, the food! Don’t laugh but my birthday is in mid-November, and usually falls right around the date that one of our local radio stations starts to play holiday music 24/7 for the next 6-7 weeks. I like to think of it as my own personal birthday gift :)
What else do I love to do over the holidays? Relax. Travel. Read a book. Spend time with my family. And I believe that teenagers should be doing the same!
Nobody wants to be stressing over college essays or application edits on Halloween or New Year’s Eve - not you, not the kids, not their parents.
If you set boundaries in this area and stick to them, you’re doing EVERYONE a favor. I promise. I wasn’t always like this. I remember my holidays were absolutely ruined during my first IEC season, but I figured it came with the territory. Now I realize that it does not, in fact, have to come with the territory!
The key is setting expectations and planning accordingly!
Here are my top tips for maintaining boundaries around application deadlines and restoring the holiday spirit!
Be clear from the very start in your contract that you will NOT work on applications during the two weeks before a deadline.
You can find this provision in my sample contract templates. I feel very strongly that this is for everyone’s benefit. If I force students to be done by October 15 or December 15, they really have no choice but to comply. This is completely non-negotiable in my practice. Oh, and this doesn’t mean they have to have drafts to me by those dates: they have to be completely, 100% DONE by those dates. This forces them to have their act together early enough that if a true, legitimate emergency did occur, I could step in and help if absolutely needed on October 16 or December 16. Yes, I occasionally hear some whining about it but everyone is very grateful at the end. Not to mention: what does an admissions officer think of an applicant that submits an application at 11:59 p.m. on October 31?
Remind, remind, remind.
Most of my students are finished by the time they return to school senior year, but then I take on a second round of “Late Start” seniors. I DRILL IT into these students’ minds that they must, must, must be finished two weeks before a given deadline. No one dares give me any kind of excuse as it gets closer to the date because they’ve gotten sooo many reminders beforehand!
When all else fails… time to head out of the country!
My secret weapon. One year we left the country over the holidays for the first time in a while (I’m usually in Florida) and I went even more overboard than normal - warning all of my students that I would be out of the country with ZERO access to email. Guess what? They had their act together like you would not BELIEVE. The idea that I would actually be out of the country with (gasp) no access to email scared even the most irresponsible of students into submission. There were no panicked emails at 9:00 pm on December 15 that year. Well - let’s just say that I’ve “gone out of the country” every year since. Usually I actually do, occasionally I don’t, but that’s my story and i’m sticking to it :) I do have a backup plan in case of a true emergency, but in our smartphone-addicted society, I want them to understand that I’m not responding to email. Because a 5-minute email seems like it’s not a big deal until you get them every day from forty people. Nope. Can’t do that while you’re out of the country! (Yes, I am well aware that they have internet in other countries but no one seems to have caught on to that yet. Shhh.)
Ready to start putting up boundaries of your own? Check out my Senior Email Template Bundle. It includes fourteen pages of email templates, written both from IEC and assistant perspectives, and keeps seniors on track from December all the way through May. Winter break plans, mid-year reports, checking status charts, depositing, you name it - it’s there. Even the “out of the country” email :) And because we think of everything, we even have different versions for those who are admitted ED and those who are still in the game.