If you’ve ever worked in Residence Life, you know the struggle really can be real.
Here are 20 things that RAs struggle through on and off the clock.
1. When all your friends are hanging out and having fun and you’re stuck working desk.
Your friends always seem to be making fun, impromptu plans and everyone is invited. But you won’t be there because you’ll be stuck on desk duty while everyone else is out having a good time.
2. When your decorations are due by midnight and it’s 11:30 PM and you’re still painting.
This is usually the quality of your results.
3. And the night before your residents all move in you’re running around taping up door tags in your hall.
4. But you know better than anyone that by week two, some wasted stranger is going to rip them down anyway.
5. Then having to change your hallway theme again during midterm week.
6. Roommate conflicts that happen before the semester even starts.
7. When you’re finally getting ready to go to bed and you stumble upon a random incident.
You never catch a break! In Residence Life, we don’t find incidents. Incidents find us.
8. The tedious documentation that follows an already overwhelming incident.
It was bad enough that you just stayed up until 4 a.m. handling an incident with campus police. Now you must write and submit a report about it, even though you can barely remember your own name at this hour.
9. Parents calling you about an issue with their student, and you’re wondering how they got your phone number in the first place.
10. You need to come up with a fun, educational programming idea, but you know nobody is going to show up without the promise of food.
11. Running into a resident at a bar or a party.
This was supposed to be a fun night. And now I have to leave because we are now violating my contract policy.
12. You remind yourself on a daily basis that you do not have to snap every time you agree with something someone says.
13. That awkward 3 A.M. encounter when your resident knocks on your door, half naked, asking for a condom.
14. Doing your nightly rounds of the building and trying to figure out where that odor of marijuana is coming from.
15. When the resident who has been documented on three separate occasions has bloodshot eyes tells you they haven’t been smoking tonight.
16. Being on a first-name basis with campus police and administrators.
17. Handling an incident that you thought only happened on TV or in the movies.
18. When you’re halfway through the semester and you see residents who have never left their room before.
19. Fire alarms are absolutely terrifying, but it has nothing to do with the possibility of there being a fire…
…And everything to do with the chance of writing an incident report afterward.
20. Training. More training. And continued training.
Even when the semester starts, the training never ends.
