Training
This is where you learn everything from dealing with roommate conflicts to door decorations to fire safety to programming requirements. When you're a returning staff member, it can be a personal challenge not to fall asleep, but there are always new things to learn every year.
Room Checks
Once you check in, you receive a key that supposedly unlocks your room. Student staff gets the exciting task of checking all of the keys for all of the doors in all of the rooms in the hall, and then checking out the rooms themselves. After all, nothing's worse than getting a key that doesn't work or a room without a bed. By the time you move in, your room has been checked two or three times since someone moved out. These checks include filing maintenance requests, moving furniture around, and occasionally disposing of some less than desirable leftover food.
To-Do Lists
These are all of the miscellaneous tasks that keep you from having a solid break, or at least from relaxing when you take a break. It can be anything from organizing the board game closet to making hall government applications. Nothing on the list seems long or seems difficult, but every item somehow has a way of taking an inordinate amount of time.
Policy Signs
You didn't realize printers could have personalities until you learn that if one does, it's a jerk. Believe it or not, the human heart can actually break from realizing you spent an hour trying to print and laminate signs that had the wrong time. Despite how simple they may look, even the smallest decorations on the hall can take hours. When someone tears them down it makes you wonder if it was worth trying to un-jam a printer at 3 a.m.
Door Decs
This is the creative and, in my opinion, most fun part of building prep. Making one door dec? Fun! Adding another? Even better! Going for three? Now that's a good time! How about forty? It gets tiring very fast. Also, somehow yours never look as good as the floor next to you. On the plus side, you'll learn that there are several ways to spell ANY name and that you can stretch one stick of glue pretty far.
Staff
The best part about training is that misery loves company and getting to work with such fun and amazing people is decidedly the best part of the job. It's really fun living in an entire residence hall with only ten people. Whether it's late nights in the Housing Office or building lobby, hanging out and working with your staff is probably the most fun you'll have during training--at least until the residents show up!
