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PROLOGUE
The crash nobody warns you about
Nobody warns you about the crash.
You spend months in survival mode. Inquiry season. Open houses. Application deadlines. Decision day. Running on coffee, adrenaline, and sheer will.
And then it stops.
The phone gets quieter. The inbox slows down. The urgency that defined your life for the last four months just lifts.
You should feel relieved. And you do, for about a day.
Then something strange happens. You feel flat. Tired in a way that sleep doesn't fix. A little lost. Like you've been sprinting toward a finish line for so long that you forgot what it feels like to just walk.
I've felt this. More than once.
For a long time, I thought something was wrong with me. Everyone around me seemed fine. And there I was, dragging myself through the day, wondering why I couldn't just shake it off.
That crash is real. It happens to a lot of us in this work. And the 2025 MarCom Society Salary Survey backs that up, with a significant number of school marketing professionals reporting struggles with burnout and mental health.
These are not people who don't care. These are people who care deeply, give everything they have, and have very little left over when the season finally ends.
If that's you right now, hear this.
You are not weak. You just ran a very long race, probably without enough support, and your mind and body are asking for something you haven't given them in months.
The work will be there when you're ready. Make sure you are there too.
Thanks,
Brendan
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SPONSOR
Andrea Gribble from #SocialSchool4EDU is hosting the 2026 Social Media for Schools Retreat in Stillwater, MN, on June 23–25, 2026. This is THE professional development event for school communicators who want to level up their social media game.
Join her team and an amazing community of school communicators from across the country for...
Expert-led sessions on AI and social media strategy
Hands-on workshops with built-in implementation time
Real solutions for empowering student storytellers
Networking with people who understand your challenges
Details + registration: https://socialschool4edu.com/retreat/
UPCOMING EVENT
For MarCom Society Members Only
Leveraging Canva Without a Graphic Design Degree
In this interactive workshop, you'll learn how to leverage the industry's most powerful, yet user-friendly design tool to elevate your digital presence and marketing efforts. Attendees will walk away knowing how to build a brand kit, make templates for teams to use, and ultimately make visual assets that will stop the doom-scrolling of right-fit families in their tracks.
About Abi: Abi is a seasoned marketing and admissions professional, with over 6 years of experience working in-house and agency-side in the private and independent school world. A wannabe-graphic designer at heart, Abi has leveraged Canva for her teams and her clients to make workloads more efficient, elevate schools' brand consistency, and most importantly, have some creative fun.
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Whenever You're Ready, There Are 5 Ways I Can Help You
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