Squeak of the Week

Editor’s Note: The Creative Department is privileged to periodically employ co-op students from University of Cincinnati’s prestigious, College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP). One of our current co-ops, Patience Woolridge, also has experience working as a resident advisor (RA) on the UC campus. Here is her story.

Out of my four years in college, three of them have been spent being a resident advisor.  A lot of people either get fired or quit after the first year; and for those who make it to year two, barely anyone would dare to return for a third. Did I hate being an RA? Yes.  Do I regret being one? No, not exactly.

Training was a month of hell learning how to prevent hell from happening.  Each day was filled with workshops, seminars, and discussions on topics everywhere from safety to diversity, from team building to conflict management.  After the daily torture of learning useful information, we were forced into various get-to-know-you activities within our on staff.  Outside of the icebreakers and never ending meetings, only during our breaks for sleep and food, did we have time to do our homework, for lack of a better term. Bulletin boards had to be decorated and put up, and in my case every year I ended up with two or three instead of just one. Door decorations displaying the residents’ name had to be made for all 60-80 of the students (depending on which hall you lived in).  A room condition report had to be made for each resident, which entailed going into each room and playing inspector gadget and writing down every nick, crack and smudge.  And everyone’s absolute favorite, each RA was required to call every single one of their residents to introduce themselves and carry on the most awkward conversation anyone could ever engage in.

When training was over, everyone started moving in.  All six hundred plus residents.  Chaos would be an extreme understatement.  Once the pandemonium halfway died down (two days later), the staff had to figure out duty days and weekends for the entire quarter – picking out days to sacrifice your freedom, personal time, and sleep to have your sanity chopped into pieces by irresponsible, high-strung adolescents.  After dates were chosen, we would go over floor meeting topics.  It was custom, more like a requirement, for each RA to have a grand floor meeting with all of the residents the night before classes started to go over the resident hall rules and regulations.  The agony and horror is definitely comparable to that first awkward phone call because you then had to put on a façade and actually look like you sincerely cared about their well-being for a solid hour.

So this will be my first year I won’t be already stressed out when classes start.  I won’t have to plan for educational programs that people won’t attend, I won’t have completely pointless staff meetings on a regular basis, no weekly reports stating how my week has been, no duty days or duty nights, no incident reports every time something happens, no fire drills at 2am, no roommate agreements, no rounds, and unfortunately no free room and board.  But who can put a price on having a peace of mind year round?