Last year, I was hired to be a resident advisor, or RA, on my college campus. I applied for the job so I could expand my leadership skills and be a resource for college students. A year later, after tons of late nights, heated conversations, tough conflicts, and hard decisions, I do not regret taking the job. It is one of the best experiences I have taken on in my life.

Throughout my sophomore year, I had to make tough decisions as an RA that upset a good number of fellow students. Some of these students are friends of mine and I would be lying if I said I didn’t lose sleep over my decisions. It truly sucks when you catch a friend in a policy violation and are forced to document him or her. Part of my heart always wants to look the other way, but I never do.

Throughout all of the long nights I have endured, I have been called a snitch, a taddle-tale, the fun police, and a fat ass. I have even been threatened a couple of times. One resident taunted “snitches get stitches” and wanted to “talk” to me privately. I passed another resident that I was forced to document on some stairs in one of the dorm halls. I heard her tell her friends right after that she should have tripped me on the way by.

I apologize to the residents that I pissed off along the way. I know that my actions were not exactly favorable to you. However, even though I could have looked the other way, I would not change a single thing if I stumbled upon the same situation again.

If you went through the training that I have gone through in order to do my job, you would understand why I take my job so seriously. Yes, I totally understand that drinking is going to happen in college and most of the time you all can handle yourselves just fine. It only takes one careless person to make a careless decision that ends up getting someone killed. One guy could leave his drunk friend on his back in a room to “sleep it off” for the night. I don’t want to wake up the next morning to the smell of sour vomit and have to key into a room to find a student dead from alcohol poisoning. I don’t want to hear about the student who drove drunk and hit a kid on the side of the road. I don’t want to hear about the girl on campus who was apparently “asking for it” despite being way too intoxicated to consent to sex.

You may be really attached to that Yankee Candle you got at the mall, but I do not want to hear that you lost your life because the candle started an uncontrollable fire in your room. I understand that you might get arrested for smoking your marijuana outside, but a blunt can start a fire just as easy as a candle can.

I know that winter can put a damper on outdoor activities and sometimes a game of hallway lacrosse sounds like a great idea. However, I don’t want to read in the paper that a student caused thousands of dollars in damage because their lacrosse ball hit a water sprinkler.

College students in general make a ton of stupid mistakes. After all, we are young and our brains are still developing. There may be someone reading this article that truly believes that the dumb college student label does not apply to them. Perhaps that is true, but how are RAs supposed to know which students can and cannot make smart decisions? We can’t.

I am sorry if I am known as the hard-ass RA who wrote you up last weekend. I am sorry that you don’t agree with me. However, I am not sorry that I take my job seriously. I believe that ruining your night is better than someone getting hurt, or worse.