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Nathaniel Skutley

By Alison Dewers

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sidenote: I only got 18 responses to my survey so that’s why some of the number seems funky. I’ll change the numbers as soon as I (hopefully) get some more responses.

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okay so I fixed mine up a bit, lemme know which one you like better!

By Nathaniel Skutley

In September 2019 I began my first semester as President of the Student Government Association. I was excited and had many goals to reform the SGA, but it didn’t go according to plan. At a meeting later in the year, a senator we’ll refer to as “L” proclaimed to me in a meeting;

“We the Senate are dissatisfied with your leadership and would like to give you a chance to resign.”

“Excuse me?” I asked in complete shock, quickly responding before he could, “No, I will not resign and I look forward to seeing you all next week.”

To understand how this happened and where it came from, I had to have a moment of reflection with my good friend and Vice President of the Student Government, Jordan Bellante.

I went to Jordan some time later that day at the comfy seats tucked away by the stairs in the cafeteria. Jordan, with his deep echoing voice, and I, discussed and decided we needed to understand their viewpoint, and that started with the beginning of my presidency.

To start the fall semester, I thought it was necessary to implement and pass a new constitution as soon as possible. After reviewing the previous constitution for the UWM-WC SGA and 104 google doc suggestions later, we decided we needed a new one. 

By the authoring of Jordan and myself, it added a substantial amount of material concerning all forms of procedure and a judiciary. The beautifully dry document was 12 pages compared to the previously two paged constitution. 

I was very confident in it being passed in the first two meetings, but my projection turned out to be a little off, by five months. The entire semester unraveled into contention on the document that was supposed to be uniting and non-partisan, I didn’t even know there were sides or even parties within the UWM-WC SGA! The most opposition emerged from a senator who was on the losing end of my presidential campaign, we’ll refer to them as Senator F. 

Senator F rallied new members of the SGA into a belief that the new constitution was “shady.” This erupted from a summer meeting erecting the proposed constitution, of which they couldn’t make. This created even more animosity in this person towards myself, not to mention the campaign I won, that continued to boil as the semester began. Within the first three weeks of my presidency, our advisor received a complaint about me and my communication. We talked as a whole SGA about communication and we decided on Snapchat and Microsoft Teams as our form of communicating. Snapchat would turn out to be the bain of my presidential existence as it created more misunderstandings within the SGA. Many messages were taken out of context which lead to Senator F and their allies dumping fuel on the fire. Most were from myself and lead to more complaints, that were directed at the advisor and not myself.

Over the semester I continued to hear whispers of drama within the SGA Senators, but decided it wasn’t my place as a leader to get involved. This, along with my lack of knowledge of complaints due to them never approaching me in person, lead to my complete shock when Senator L asked for me to resign. This led to two trail like settings where I sat in front of a room and had senators describe their problems with me, for an hour and a half each. Pretty invigorating, not gonna lie. Many good points of constructive criticism came from members who were not in league with Senator F, of whom didn’t show up to either meetings. I said all of about 30 words during each meeting to acquit myself. With the help of Jordan, basically acting as my defense lawyer while masterfully staying as bipartisan as possible, the allies of Senator F had their arguments defeated one by one. One declared I was corrupt, dramatic I know, for announcing to the SGA during session “the chair would look favorable upon a motion for *Blank.” This is in contention for the most absurd of the claims as it is a common phrase used by a chair within Robert’s Rules of Order, however, it demonstrated the ignorance of many of the senators due to faulty veteran influence, something I have strove to fix and have begun to today. In the end, the estimated Senator Dominc Robson declared, “Every single allegation has been dropped.”

One of the biggest struggles I have had throughout my educational career has been writing. I have had a bad relationship with writing since a very young age for one reason, its challenging. Like most people I enjoy challenging myself, however, writing is a challenge I haven’t figured out how to overcome. I have taken countless writing and literacy classes, talked to classmates, and teachers but for some reason I was still struggling. I would watch other students sit down and write pages on pages without flinching. Meanwhile I’m stuck on the first sentence trying to put all my ideas together so I can continue writing. My teachers always told me “just write down all of your ideas”, “make a flow chart”, or some other ‘method’ that was supposed to make the process easier. All this ever did was frustrate me more and added another step to the already lengthy process.

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I don’t dislike writing; I just don’t particularly enjoy it. To me it feels like manual labor minus the satisfaction of actually accomplishing something. Every paper I write whether it’s a 10-page research paper or a 600-word story seems to take longer than it needs to. I’m not the most patient person when it comes to schoolwork and I usually get flustered -even angry- at the mention of having to write a paper because I know I will be stuck on it for hours. I have spent entire days trying to gather my thoughts in an attempt to make a coherent paper. Usually my mind turns into the equivalent of a carnival cash booth; where you have to grab as many tickets as you can while their being blown around you. The lack of progress leads to procrastination which leads to rushed ideas, ending with a less then satisfactory product.

I have only been able to turn in one writing assignment and feel like I accomplished everything I wanted to with it. During my junior year of high school, my Honors English teacher assigned us to write an ode about any object we wanted. After spending roughly three hours writing terrible odes at home, I picked a random one and accepted my fate. It was absolutely terrible and the more I thought about it, the more I hated it. So, since I was going to do bad on the assignment, I decided to write another one making fun of my failing grade. I handed it in feeling oddly excited, like I had accomplished something with my writing. Not to brag but it turned out to be my teacher’s favorite ode of the year. This ode assignment gave me hope that I could overcome my struggles with writing. I went on the take two more writing classes my senior year, despised both of them. However, I felt more confident in my writing abilities going into college because of them. Then in college I took English 101 and its equally aggravating twin, English 102, at Washington County. After spending countless hours writing papers for those classes that I wasn’t proud of, I had enough. I said to myself, “If you aren’t required to take anymore English classes, you’re not going to”

A month later when I found myself voluntarily signing up for English 290: Digital Story Telling. I wasn’t thinking about the class to be writing intensive. However, looking back I realize how dumb that was, it is an English class After all. The first assignment in the class was enjoyable because I got the take a trip down memory lane (that was a pun), making it easy to write about. However, this second one wasn’t so easy. We have to write a story about conflict and growth that we have faced here on campus. As usual I had no clue what to write about and quickly decided I would worry about it on Friday when it was due. I never stopped thinking about what I would write about. I contemplated just making a story up, until Thursday night in my superheroes in mythology class. My professor, Dr. Peterson, was teaching us about how every myth is a metaphor that can be applied to our lives.

“Myths are just a bunch of lies” he said, “They construct narratives that are meant to put you in a relationship with your own life.”

I thought this was just a bunch of crap until he started to elaborate. He used Athena, goddess of war and wisdom, as an example. He showed us a picture of her standing with a large metal helmet on her head, an owl on her shoulder, and holding a shield with Medusa’s head on it. The helmet representing war, the owl representing death, and the shield representing protection, in literal terms.

“You can look at this story in two ways” Dr Peterson said, “You can either be an idiot and take it literally, or you can look at it for what it is, a metaphor.”

He went on to explain that Athena with all her armor is a representation of any task you face in life. If you try and fight her head on, Medusa’s head will turn you to stone, freeze any progress you’ve made, and you will lose. But if you take a step back and reflect on what you are trying to accomplish, Much like Perseus using the reflection of the mirror to defeat medusa for Athena, you will have a much easier time completing what you need to. This really resonated with me. I Felt stupid for not realizing this was the obvious reason I struggled with writing assignments, I was always taking them head on. I was trying to force my way to the end, when I should stop and reflect on what I want and need to accomplish. Now I’m looking forward to future writing assignments to see how well I can apply this story to my own life.

The age-old question of, “What are you going to school for,” always bothered me. It scared me because it meant I had to wake up to the reality that I was an adult who needed to get his act together. Whenever this interrogation tactic was deployed I caved in. I answered using the most common response a person my age could use, “I don’t know.” I always felt like an idiot for saying that, but it was the truth. I think many people appreciated my honesty though because the usual response was “It’s okay you still have time!” That might have been true but put a lot of pressure on myself to figure things out. 

When I was first asked the question I was a junior in high school. I initially said I wanted to be a writer for a comedy show. I like to think that I’m funny sometimes. Or at the very least I think I have good ideas. Anyways, this was the answer for many years until I shot myself down. I said to myself, “It just isn’t realistic. You’re really gonna move away to Los Angeles or New York where there are tons of people like you fighting like dogs to get a job?” This made me think a lot about myself. “I am funny or creative enough to do this?” It was a dream I had to let go of.

The next year, I got into playing guitar. I started doing loads of research on the history of guitars, especially electrics. I loved walking into the guitar store and picking up a guitar, and playing quietly so no one could hear how bad I actually was, and admittedly still am. So an idea sparked in my brain. I wanted to combine my new found love for guitar and combine it with a more grounded idea. I thought of getting a business degree, which in itself isn’t a bad thing at all. It is useful in all sorts of job markets. So I answered that big question with “business.” I was dead set on this idea. I was excited to tell my parents the news. I was going to own a guitar shop! I was met with a sense of happiness. But after further discussion, my dad talked about the many years of hard work to build a business. I would be at the store from open until close. Now I am not afraid of hard work, but I am afraid of a twelve-hour day. I value my free time and if I owned a store I would get very little of that. 

I went from answering with “writing,” to “business,” and then to “business or something like that I’m not sure.” I was still looking for something more grounded. The thing I was missing was what I was good at. It was perhaps the most important question of all. 

It was Thanksgiving. My immediate family and I took a trip to see my aunt and uncle down in Chicago. I was immediately greeted by my cousin’s toddler, Leo. He ran up to me. After I said hello to everyone I swiftly picked Leo up, threw him on my back, and gave him a piggyback ride around the house. He screamed, “Firetruck! Firetruck!” I took him over to his firetruck themed playset and started to play with him. My aunt walked over to us and she started off with some softball questions like how my semester was going. Then she hit me with it, “what are you going to school for again?” At first, I was a little annoyed because I got asked it so much. Then I responded with “business or something, I don’t know…” Then she said something I wasn’t expecting, “That’s a shame, ’cause I think that you would be good with kids…I know you like to help people. I think you’re good at it.” Now initially I shrugged this off because I had some doubt. I never really thought I was good at much. But I thought I needed more input. 

I went back to UWM-WC after the Thanksgiving break and I scheduled an appointment with Liz Schielke, my advisor, so I could talk to her about what classes I should pick for the upcoming semester. I waited for a few weeks and went to the student center and waited. Liz came out and called my name. I walked behind her kind of excited because maybe I would finally be able to answer the question with assurance. She asked me to sit down so I obliged. She asked what I’d like to do. I said, “If I’m being honest I’m not really sure. That’s kind of the reason I’m here.” She asked, “What kind of problems do you like to solve?” This caught me off guard. I sat there for a minute and thought back to what my aunt said. So I said, “I like to solve people problems.” She asked another question, “Have you thought about being a counselor?” I said, “No, I haven’t.”

My aunt was right. I am good at helping people. In fact, my friends and family call me the mediator. I like dealing with kids, and I think that I can help them. It only took one person to point that out to me. And I know that this might change, nothing is concrete. But at least when people ask me that age-old question, “What are you going to school for?” I respond, “I’m going because I want to be a counselor at an elementary school.” They finally say “Oh, I can see you doing that!”