A few months ago, I wrote about stepping into a new role—new title, new responsibilities, and a brand-new level of “oh wow, that decision really does come to me now.” After a few months in the seat, I realized there’s another part of the job worth talking about:

The bad days.

You know the ones.
The days when a parent yells at you because policies exist and, shockingly, apply to everyone.
The days when you have to deliver bad news to a student who was really, really hoping today would be different.
The days when you forget your laptop at home, turn around to get it, and lose the best parking spot on campus because you were 90 seconds late—and yes, that somehow sets the tone for the entire day (….No one else? Just me?? Ok…)

Objectively? Minor things.
Emotionally? Devastating. Obviously.

Admissions work has a special talent for stacking these moments. We’re expected to be empathetic, calm, reassuring, and knowledgeable—while also enforcing deadlines, capacity limits, waitlists, and federal or institutional requirements that absolutely do not care how nice anyone is. We carry people’s hopes with us all day long, and sometimes those hopes feel heavier than a fully loaded college fair bag.

On bad days, that weight is noticeable.

Bad days are the ones where you replay conversations in your head on the drive home.
Where you think, “I think I said the right thing…?”
When your inbox fills up faster than you have time to even drink your coffee, and someone asks if you have “two seconds” for “just a quick question?”

And let’s be honest—those days stink.

But here’s the perspective I’m slowly, stubbornly learning: bad days don’t exist because we’re bad at our jobs. They exist because the work actually matters.

For every tough conversation, there’s a student who emails you later just to say thank you.
For every parent who vents their frustration at you, there’s another quietly relieved that someone took the time to explain things clearly.
For every policy you enforce, there’s a student who benefits from the structure it creates—even if they never know you were the one holding it together behind the scenes.

The good days don’t always show up with confetti. Sometimes they’re subtle. Sometimes they’re delayed. Sometimes they look like a student you helped months ago who finally registers—or a familiar face on campus who waves because you were the first person who made college feel less scary.

And sometimes the good day is simply this:
You showed up.
You answered the email.
You had the hard conversation.
You cared—despite the fact that it would have been easier not to.

Admissions professionals are often the first real “college person” a student ever meets. We’re the translators, the calm in the chaos, the people who say, “Let’s figure this out,” even when the answer isn’t what someone hoped for. That role carries weight, even on days when it mostly feels like emotional whiplash.

So on the bad days—the yelled-at days, the hard-news days, the lost-parking-spot days—I’m reminding myself of this:
If the work didn’t matter, it wouldn’t hit so hard sometimes.

And if today was one of those days for you, consider this your reminder: the good days are still there. They might just be quieter. Or later. Or hiding behind tomorrow’s inbox.

Until then—take a breath, reheat your coffee for the third time, and know that the work you’re doing matters.
Even on the days it definitely doesn’t feel like it.