RA Oddities

Posted by Braden

I've had a few more weeks on the job, and now I have a few more fun stories to tell!

1) A grandmother called and told me that her grandson (who lives in my hall) was having a hard time in school, and she asked if there was anything that I could do to help him. I talked with her for a while and assured her that I would indeed go talk to her grandson. After hanging up, I went on up to his room, knocked, made some small talk, brought up school, heard where the problem areas were, made suggestions, helped him make a plan, and went back down to my room. Then I sat for a while and wondered, "When did I become a 'responsible adult' who grandparents call about their grandchildren?! I'm only 19!" I certainly didn't mind helping, but it was still a new experience.

2) We had a fire drill the other day in our hall. My favorite part? Being told to pull the fire alarm! It was another odd am-I-really-actually-in-charge-here? moment as I went to all of the rooms and knocked to make sure that everybody was out of the building. This is most definitely the first time in my life that my instructions during a fire drill weren't "Get out of the building as quickly as you can."

3) As an RA, I turn weekly reports in to my hall advisor. Part of those reports is telling her something new that I learned about a resident from each apartment. The first few weeks were easy. However, as people have gotten busier, and as I come to know more about the residents, it becomes harder and harder for me to come up with interesting new information about 13 different apartments! Last week's report included things like "Eddie recently made a pastel drawing of a Hostess cupcake for his beginning art class" and "On Wednesday Josh was running in the morning and puked about 10 minutes into the run for apparently no reason."

4) A girl was "held hostage" the other day outside one of my boys' apartments. No, really. She was tied to a chair when a roving RA found her. The culprits claimed that the hostage's apartment had kept sending girls over to bug them about something, so they decided to take drastic action. I was rather amused. And rather sad that the incident reports that I write up never have stories quite as interesting as that one!