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.