Ah, move-in day. A day filled with meeting many new people, moving all of your belongings into a tiny little box of a room, and saying goodbye to your hometown. But there is one thing you also find on your move-in day, and that is your freshman year resident assistant or RA.
A common stereotype leads you to believe you’ll find a perky, constantly cheerful, gleefully rule-enforcing, perfect GPA-touting girl who lives at the end of the hall always reminding you about safe alcohol consumption and smart stress management.
In reality, that’s not going to happen. You may, though, find a smart, understanding, and caring student with just a little more college experience than you, who is always available to help with whatever challenges the year ahead brings. There are many things that your RA would like you to know about themselves and their jobs, but here are the top three:
- We don’t like programming either
- We only enforce the rules when you force us to
- We really do care about you
First and foremost, we know how much of a pain programming events are. Some of us were participating in them a mere year ago. They are generally long, sometimes boring, and require you to participate in something you probably normally wouldn’t do just so you won’t get in trouble or get a fine. We want you to know that we don’t really like them either. Those long, kind of boring events? We’re REQUIRED to do them. It’s part of our job description. And most of the time they are not usually fun to plan, organize and pull off, but we have to do it anyway. Try to grin and bear it just for us, and act like it’s semi-fun; trust me, it’ll make us feel so much better about our events in the end.
Do you really think we like to play the bad cop? No, not at all. We are normal people, too. We like to have fun with our friends just like you do. Believe me, it’s just as frustrating to us when you give us no choice but to enforce the rules. Unless you are blatantly flouting the rules right in front of our faces, you’re not going to get in trouble.
Nobody is out to get you! That is one of the biggest misconceptions about RA’s. Freshmen honestly believe that we like to punish people, when in reality, it’s the farthest from the truth. People getting into trouble generally just means more paperwork and headaches for us, and we definitely don’t take any pleasure in that, I can assure you.
I know, I know, you think we just do it for the paycheck. While getting paid and the free room are definite perks, they aren’t the reasons we do the job. We do the job because we genuinely do care about you. We want to see you succeed, we want to see you have a great year, and most of all, we want to see you happy.
College is a huge transition, and that’s what we’re here for. We’ve been there, and we were selected for this job because the "higher-ups" thought we would be a great fit to help nervous, incoming high school seniors blossom into strong, confident (albeit tired and a year smarter) soon-to-be college sophomores. It’s a process to get there, and we truly do consider it a privilege to help you get there, paycheck and free room aside.
The next time you see your RA, maybe just say a quick thank you. Whether you choose to believe it or not, they only want what’s best for you, and are grateful every day to get rockin’ residents like you!
