Desk Workers, Bronco Buddies, and Marching Band...Oh My!

Today is the day where students in the Bronco Marching Band, returning students volunteering to be Bronco Buddies, and Desk/Office workers move in. It's been pretty busy this morning, and there continues to be a lot of traffic throughout A/S.

I've gotten some more residents! By the end of the night I think I'll have six residents moved in...perhaps more. They're all really nervous I think. They come in to the office and timidly ask "Is this where I check in...?" It's really cute.

Other than that nothing really exciting is going on today. We have desk training later tonight from 7-10pm. I'm going to try to talk with as many residents as possible tonight. One of my suitemates, Cheyenne, has moved in. Now I have to share my bathroom. Darn.

My First Resident

Well, it's Saturday which means that training is almost over...thank goodness. The residents will move in starting August 31st at 9:00am. However, some residents, those that are Fall Welcome Ambassadors (sophomores and above who will be leading FW groups), front desk workers, and students working in the office, move in early. In fact, I now have one resident. This resident has lived in Shilling since his freshman year, which was three years ago. He's over 21, which means he can drink in his room, but his roommate cannot. I actually had a really good conversation with him the day he moved in (yesterday) and once again my job became very real to me. It was easy to talk to him, though. I asked simple but interested questions about school, his home town, etc., basically all the things I will talk to every other resident about. But it went well!

On the schedule today we'll be having our last centralized lunch with the other residence hall RAs and doing a lot of in-hall preparations. That all won't start until about noon, but I am up early to finish up room stuffers which are brochures, cable channel listings, light switch stickers to promote energy conservation and other simple things on the to-do list.

I'm not as exhausted as I have been, and I've even gotten used to getting up at 8:00am everyday. Note to Mom and Dad -- 8:00am is very different than the 11:00am+ I was waking up during the summer :-P.

I don't even know what day of the week it is.

For the past few (well, more like six or something) days, my life has been non-stop RA-related activities, as expected during our 10-day training schedule. We literally get up and get ready, then have training from, on average, 9:00am to about 10-11:00pm. We get an hour for lunch and an hour for dinner. Occasionally we get out early, like tonight for example, we were done about 8:00pm so I went and saw a movie with Jeff.

I think I have pretty much everything done...still waiting on my list of residents before I can finish writing out the door decorations and hanging all those up. We will probably get those tomorrow.

So far the sessions we have attended have been...mildly entertaining... Most of it I feel like is being way overdone, and sitting in the same chair for about five hours gets old very quickly. All the information is vital, though, so at least training is worthwhile. I've had a lot of questions answered and really gotten to know the other RAs I'll be working with this year. I've actually made some pretty good friendships, I think.

Tomorrow is another long day so this will be a short post, but I wanted to update everyone a little before it got too late into training.

Day 1

I'm all moved in! My room looks great...and feels so big since there isn't another bed/desk/person in here. Its great. I'll post pictures soon, if not at the end of this post.

Training started at 2:00pm today. It was just our staff today. We stayed in the building and went over procedures and duty nights and desk shifts and everything like that. Turns out I'll be working at the front desk every Wednesday night from 11:00pm-2:00am. Yeah. Not sure how I feel about that one. My weekly duty nights will be Thursdays. Things are actually different this year, and my duty partner Todd and I will have to do four rounds per night, the first starting around 9pm and the last around 1:00am. I only have three duty weekends for first semester, and have to work Thanksgiving. It's a little unfortunate, but at least I have family nearby :)

Well, I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed with all of the information that I received today...but my hall director is actually assigning me and this other new girl (we only have two new RAs in the entire building) training "buddies" so we have someone to ask questions without feeling dumb. Because the others (the 8 returners) we all first years at one point!

Okay here are some pictures of my room and my very first RA bulletin board!

Almost Time to Move

This is my first blog post. Awesome.

I started this blog to hopefully keep everyone up-to-date on my first year as a Resident Assistant (RA) and just keep up on my second year as a Western Michigan University Bronco. My job as an RA will be to:

-Establish a positive learning community
-Create an atmosphere where my residents feel safe and happy
-Promote diversity
-Keep tabs on my residents
-Be available when my residents need me
-Putting on 6-8 programs per semester on various topics/concentrations
-Other tasks associated with housekeeping, creating bulletin boards and door decorations, working the front desk, having 1 duty night per week and the occasional weekend duty.

I'm pretty excited to be an RA...although I am apprehensive as well. I will have about 45 (+/- some) residents. A lot of creativity, as I've found out prepping door decorations and bulletin boards, goes in to being an RA. This year our residence hall has chosen to have a "Disney Movies" theme, and my particular floor is themed around The Little Mermaid, one of my favorite Disney movies. I've used the aquatic theme for everything in my floor so far. It's going to be a really colorful floor where I hope the residents enjoy living.

I move on Thursday, August 20th during the morning/afternoon and start RA training that evening. It's going to be an interesting year.

Also this year I will be starting my second year of studies at WMU. Besides being involved in the residence halls, I will be the Vice President of Programming for the Student Alumni Association, an organization I became a part of last year. It's a pretty big job...I'm responsible for planning all of our organization's events and making sure things happen when they're supposed to and the right way. I've already started work on our first major program of the year, "Take a Bronco to Lunch" which will feature the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences. We'll be bringing back WMU alumni to network with current students and hopefully answer their questions about different concentrations within the College of Engineering. It's a lot of work, but I can handle it.

All right, that's all for now. I've still got some packing to do before moving...in 2 days!!
Here are some examples of the door decorations I made for my residents.