Dear residents,
I love you. Becoming a Resident Assistant, or a floor advisor, was the best decision I've made in college. I love my residents, I love my school, and I want to be here for you. Sometimes it's easy to forget to appreciate our residents, and sometimes we may feel unappreciated, but I love my job. Resident/RA relationships can sometimes be tricky to navigate the balance between friends and a school employee, but we love being both.
I want to help you. From telling you who to talk to when your concerns are too big for me to handle, to giving you roommate advice or unlocking your door when you forget your keys, to helping you with an assignment (if I can!), I want to be here for you in any way I can. I love it when you stop by my room to say hi, or to the staff office when I'm on duty. There's nothing I dislike hearing more than when my residents say "I don't want to bother you." We're here for a reason, and there are very few things you could ask for that will bother us or upset us.
That being said, we want respect. When I get a noise complaint from your room, I don't enjoy knocking on your door and telling you to keep it down. I've been in your place...sometimes I still am. When we knock on your door, we're not out to get you. We aren't trying to ruin your fun. I want to make sure all residents feel comfortable, or that they can sleep or read or study in peace, and I want everyone to be safe. So, when someone is sick, or too drunk, or doing something unsafe, I want to intervene so that I can help. Trust me, most of us don't enjoy that aspect of our job.
My favorite part of the job is bringing the floor together. I enjoy floor meetings. I love programming, bulletin boards, and making door decorations. My residents are great about attending, and I normally get compliments on my board and door work. But sometimes, very rarely, my boards get ripped down, or I take a lot of money out of our budget for programs that people promise to attend and don't. Everyone knows what it's like to put hard work into things that don't get appreciated. Like I said before, please just respect it. We're students too, and some of us even have jobs aside from the RA gig. On top of busy schedules, there's a lot more work for our job behind the scenes. We love what we do, but we want to be a team with our residents.
I'm excited for the school year to start, and I hope you are, too. I want to help make your year an awesome one, with your help, of course. Your RAs love you!
