It’s that time of year. Students are cramming for final exams, holding their last student org events, and carrying stuff out of their residence halls by the laundry basketful. Over in professional staff world, we’re holding closing staff meetings, gearing up for move-out, and suddenly— somehow —the inbox feels like it’s bursting at the seams. And in and among all that chaos, something else looms on the horizon: the end-of-year report.
How are you supposed to write a quality annual report when you’re coasting into the end of the year on fumes? How do you effectively switch your brain from trying to track the 84 small tasks on our immediate to-do list to reflecting back on high-level achievements from the past year? Quite simply, how do you even remember everything that happened?!
Depending on the nature of the report and your position, you might be presenting a report that represents the activities of your entire team or department. Or your report might be more focused on yourself and your professional accomplishments from the year. Either way, a year is a lengthy span of time to summarize easily.
It’s overwhelming to compose an end-of-year report if you haven’t put any systems in place to set yourself up for success. If you’re looking at the prospect of writing this year’s report with dread or exhaustion, consider establishing these systems and habits now so that you feel confident about the project in the future.
- Track key metrics on a monthly basis. What are the most important metrics for you to share at the end of the year? Event attendance, intentional interactions, room moves, number and type of duty calls, or conduct cases are commonly tracked data points for residence life teams. But who wants to try to pull all that data at once and slog through a spreadsheet with 80,000 entries? Not me. (I’ve done this. It’s awful.) Logging data on a regular basis throughout the year not only means you can avoid the data overload in May, but you’ll also be able to identify trends throughout the year that could add color to your report.
- Add qualitative highlights to that monthly tracking, too. Did you host particularly standout events, engage in unique cross-campus collaborations, or face a spike in student of concern cases? Note those items in a running document on a monthly (or better yet, weekly!) basis so that you don’t forget about them later. Hold a 15-minute window of time on your calendar every Friday to complete this task. Our team has started compiling weekly highlights in a shared document and it’s made a huge difference in my ability to report out at any given moment. I know we’ll appreciate establishing this habit when we get to report-writing time.
- Take yourself out for coffee. It’s easy to say, “Oh sure, I’ll just track data monthly!” and then BAM, it’s May and you’ve done nothing. Lean into that “little treat” culture and block a few hours on your calendar once a month to take yourself to an offsite location and put your nose to the grindstone on updating the data. If you’re caffeinated, the work goes faster, right? The key here is making a plan early (hence blocking time on your calendar as “busy”) and being disciplined enough to stick to the plan.
- Color code your calendar. This one sounds silly, but it’s really effective. Designate a color in your calendar for professional development activities, and another for “campus contributions.” These are likely areas you may be asked to share out or account for and it’s so easy to forget that workshop you attended in October when you’re sitting at your computer in May. By applying a special color to these items, you can quickly click or scroll back through your calendar and these items will visually jump out at you, making it easy to compile a list of your key achievements.
- Use Roompact Insights to quickly identify key data points. If you use Roompact on your campus, dig into the Insights feature to produce neat summaries of your department’s activities. For example, if you’re using event tags to categorize the type of events you host, the “Events – Tag Count” Insight shows how many events you’ve completed in each category – no spreadsheet download necessary. “Attendance – Summary by Location” will show you how many students attended events in each location you have set up in Roompact. And “Events – Proposal with Assessment Data” is a great one to dig in deeper if you want to report on learning outcomes, staff feedback, or more granular data analysis.
- Email yourself. You already talk to yourself, now just type it up! Create a rule in your inbox that sends emails from yourself to a folder titled “EOY Content.” Throughout the year, forward email threads or send photos to yourself that will prompt reminders of an item that you want to include in the report. You can even voice-to-text a stream-of-consciousness thought and file it away here for later. Imagine reading an email from yourself that says something like, “just held boot scoot bbq…need more mechanical bulls.” At the very least, you’ll be entertained as you journey through memories of the past year.
There’s hope out there for a report-writing experience where the information is at your fingertips, ready to be assembled and showcased. With a few simple additions to your weekly or monthly routine, you’ll be ready to knock it out of the park when you’re called upon to present the year in review.
