Dear Future Resident Advisors,
Welcome to the family. You are officially in one of the biggest leadership roles on campus and about to get a good dose of student affairs over the next several months. Here are five things I wish I would have known the summer before I began my first year as an RA.
1. Get as much done in the summer as possible.
Get a rough estimate of how many door decorations you will have to make for the semester and start making them now. Recruit friends and family, buy them pizza and put them to work. These do take time but it is so rewarding when one of your residents compliments the work you did.
2. Embrace Google Calendar (or whatever your university uses as a schedule) and schedule white space.
This will be your life. Keep a paper planner too if that's what floats your boat, but being able to have the same calendar on your phone, computer and tablet
3. Friends: Make new and keep the old.
Being an RA can easily become your life which means it is usually pretty easy to make friends with other RAs because you are all going through the same things. These friends will be a great support for you in this job and are awesome when you need to talk through work things that you can't talk about with other friends. Even though your RA friends will just get where you are in life, keep the old ones and maintain those friendships because your entire life does not need to be Res Life. These friends will remind you that there is a bigger world out there and that you can take time for yourself to be a normal college student, too. Sometimes it can get lonely being an RA, but remember, your friends before Res Life probably miss you a lot and would love to hang out with you if you simply reach out to them.
4. Take everything as a learning experience and don't get stuck on how things "could have been done."
Inevitably you will have to confront a policy violation, whether it's quiet hours or a party in the Residence Hall. Sometimes you will handle these situations extremely well and can walk away like Judd Nelson at the end of "The Breakfast Club" pumping your fist in the air. Good job, celebrate your awesomeness.
Other times, situations are a little more complicated and you will have to make judgment calls in the moment that you might not be sure of, but that you need to take ownership of. Honesty matters in this job, but if you don't handle something perfectly according to your supervisors please, please, please: do not take this as a personal criticism. Take it as a learning experience. Being in such a visible on-campus leadership role means that a lot is expected of you but you are still a student and you cannot be perfect in everything. It will be easy to dwell on these things but it is so much more important to focus on the fact that the situation was handled and everyone is safe. After the situation is over, role
5. Embrace your new identity as an RA and be confident.
Despite the fact that things in Res Life can get a little crazy at times, it is arguably the most rewarding job you could have during college. You will get to see your residents do great things, you will build a community out of strangers and you will learn a lot about yourself in the process. You will begin to say things that RAs say and place too much thought on the message a door knock conveys. But that is all part of the journey so embrace it and have a good time. Be confident and remember you were chosen for this job for a reason.
I hope some of these things help as you get ready to enter into your new role as an RA. Congratulations, have fun and utilize all of the resources available to you—especially other RAs.
Best wishes,
RA Emilia
