Jaycie Miller advising at USUE since 2016

Jaycie Miller is a new addition to the Utah State University Eastern campus. She was hired and began her career in the spring 2016 semester. “I am an academic advisor and I cover students with last names R-Z, anyone in the Huntsman School of Business and anyone getting a bachelor degree.”
She has received her degrees through two different universities. “I have both my bachelor’s and master’s in social work. I went to USU in Logan for the BSW and then the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for my MSW.”
Loving her experience at Utah State made Miller’s career choice an easy one. “I absolutely, 100 percent, no doubt about it, loved my time at Utah State. From the day I started working with students up there, a month into my freshman year, I knew I wanted to stay there. I felt like USUE was a great place for me to start my career and get back to a place that I loved.”
She has a love for the students she serves. “I love learning about my students and trying to help them sort out the different pieces of their lives. Life isn’t just about school, so seeing and hearing my students start to open up about those other areas is really cool. Building up those relationships and getting students to trust me are my favorite parts of my job.”
With such a great accomplishment, Miller deserves the right to brag. “It’s super cheesy for an advisor to be proud of her education, but I am. I was a first-generation student and grew up in a house where education was the goal, but there wasn’t a set plan to get there. I worked ridiculously hard and got my bachelors in three years. I got into an awesome program for my masters and finished that in a year. I know what it’s like to work three jobs, go to school full time and still have a life. It was crazy hard, but I did it even when life tried to get in the way.”
She has some exciting goals in mind for her next five years. “I feel like I should have more professional goals, but the first ones that came to mind were first, road trip to or through every state: Hawaii excluded, Alaska included. I’ve made it to 24 of them so far, so the plan is to keep going. Second, my birthday falls on the Super Bowl every few years. It will happen again within the next five, so I think it would be awesome to get tickets for my birthday. This one is a little more crazy, but still possible.”
Life experience has taught Miller an important lesson. “Don’t be afraid of chaos. I don’t mean you have to enjoy it all the time, but just don’t be afraid of it. We all have our comfort zones and everything outside of them is a little scary. But over time you learn to master more and more of the craziness, and there is less that can scare you. I haven’t always liked my chaos, but I’ve learned that it won’t last forever.”
If she could choose to live during any time period, she would choose 1867 as well as 1692. “I’d like to go to 1867 if I could be in the South. It’s after the Civil War, and I think it would be cool to meet people who went through it and see how they rebuilt. My other one would be 1692 in Salem, Mass. so I could know more about the witch trials. That’s one part of history that I definitely want to know more about.”
Miller definitely lived the “college life” when she was a student. “I loved the freedom of college and how creative we could be to entertain ourselves. My college life was full of spontaneous things like building mattress slides or driving around town in a truck tub or camping out for days for football and basketball games. Everything we did was random and crazy, and it’s how I met my best friends.”
She wants all students at USUE to remember, “it’s okay to make mistakes and not have it all figured out right now. You’ll get it. Don’t be afraid of new experiences or doing something that sounds ridiculous at the time. Those will be the memories you keep forever.”