Imagine this: You're in your room. Your friends are shouting and you're just trying to finalize plans before a night out. Someone is blasting music, and then there's the dreaded knock on the door, followed by the call of, "Res life!" You hurry up and shush your friends, make sure there's nothing in plain view that can get you in trouble, and you open the door. "Yeah?" you ask, partially angry and partially scared. The person on the other side looks at you while simultaneously looking past you into your room and says, "Hey, we're the RA's on duty. It's kind of loud in here, so would you mind just turning down your music?" You say you will, they tell you to have a good night and you shut the door and roll your eyes, turning the music down the smallest possible amount, barely making a difference. You hate residence life and you can't stand the fact that you have to listen to them on a regular basis. But here's the thing: we're just doing our jobs. We're just trying to keep the school safe. We want to help. So here are 10 things about Resident Assistants that you didn't know, or simply forgot.
1. We're just students, too.
This is one of the most important things that other students forget about their RA's. We're students. We're here to learn. We can't always answer our doors, because sometimes we're at the library writing papers. You hope that we will always be available the minute you need us, but the problem is, we have classes. Sometimes, we have other jobs. We're doing the best we can for you, but you can't forget that we have to do the best we can for us too.
2. We take ourselves too seriously because we have to, not because we want to.
Being an RA is something we're paid to do. Some of us are paid with room and board, some of us are paid with a single room at no extra charge, and some of us are paid with a monthly stipend. One way or another, we're paid to do this job, and to treat it like exactly that, a job. So when you think your RA is overreacting to that one beer in your room, you have to remember that they're simply doing what they're paid to do.
3. We go through a rigorous interview and training process.
We begged for this job. Seriously. There was an application, there were recommendations. There was an interview, a group interview, and finally, someone wrote us letters that said, "Hey, we think you're a good fit for this." We fight for this job, and if we're your RA, we beat out at least a hundred competitors who wanted the same position. We don't get hired by accident. After the entire interview process, we go through classes to give us an idea of what's expected of us. Then, after everything, we go through a full week of training, where we learn how to handle situations, when to call the cops, how to handle health concerns and how to relate to our residents. These training days go from 9 am to 9 pm, and they're all about you, our residents. Everything we do is to learn how to be the best we can be for you.
4. We all want to be the cool RA.
The problem with the cool RA is that it's impossible to be a cool RA at all times. We want to be your friend. We want you to like us. We want you to come to us when you need help, simply because you trust us. But the problem is, when we can't be the cool RA, you sometimes lose faith in us. We can't let you smoke in the building. We can't let you drink under-age. We can't let you destroy other people's property simply because someone looked at you funny. Again, this is a job, and we sometimes have to be less than "cool" to do it.
5. We do not get you in trouble. I repeat, WE DO NOT GET YOU IN TROUBLE.
WE DID NOT DO THIS TO YOU. As an RA, the only responsibility we have is to document what has happened. We write down what went wrong, what went right, who was angry, or hurt, or who's laptop was stolen. That's it. We give all the details we can to our boss, and they decide the punishment. We do not have the power to make your punishment, to change it, or to push it off until next week, if that's a better time for you. We did not do it.
6. We expect you not to show up to our programs. So we bribe you.
We know you live for pizza, and we bribe you to come to our programs with it. Nothing ups attendance like free food. You hate when we say this out loud, but you only have to have one well-planned program with zero attendance to never make that mistake again.
7. We do our best not to make you feel awkward after a bad encounter.
It isn't the easiest thing to do, but you have to believe we have more pressing things to think about than the two beers we found in your room after we found you vomiting in the bathroom. We're glad you're OK. Now quit staring at us.
8. We have dealt with things you can't quite imagine.
Do you think your RA overreacts when you say you're feeling a little sad, or that the pressure is too much? That panic comes from experience. The part of being an RA that no one ever talks about is the part that hurts us the most. We get trained for every situation, and somehow a situation still arises that we aren't quite prepared for. We're just kids, in the end, like you. But we have to deal with very adult situations, from sexual assault to physical assault to major depressive episodes. Sometimes we see kids who drink too much, and when we call for help, we don't know if that kid is going to survive. You might think I'm overreacting to your friend who's stumbling down the hall, but really, I'm remembering the kid who couldn't take the breathalyzer test and was sent to the hospital to get their stomach pumped.
9. We love to watch you mature.
You guys grow up so much in a year. We watch you trade friend groups. We watch you lose touch with people who weren't good for you, and we watch you finally acknowledge that the counselor or the tutor is exactly what you need. We get to be proud of you when your parents aren't around to see how well you've done.
10. This job is hard, but we love it.
This job is the hardest thing some of us have done so far. We've been through a lot. We do a lot. We struggle to meet board and program deadlines while meeting paper deadlines and struggling for tests. We juggle multiple jobs and eighteen credits, and some days are so disappointing that we just want to cry. We don't want to make you hate us. We don't do this job to make you angry or to get you kicked out. But at the end of the year, we remember how much we loved it. We remember the residents that made us laugh. We remember the residents that made us consider quitting, and we watch them leave knowing they're better off for having interacted with us and learning from it. (And when they didn't learn from it, we just smile and wave.)
If you're thinking of being an RA, don't let this scare you. It will be one of the best things you've ever done, and you should absolutely consider it. You find your family, you find your place, and you find out exactly what it's like to balance grades with programming.
