The End of Week 2 of Classes

Hello!!

Things have been going really well in the realm of 1st Shilling. I'm not sure where to start with this update, so I will just start to ramble and try to list as many things as I can remember!

Last night I held a "1st Shilling Hits the Books!" program. This will be a weekly (or bi-weekly) program where the residents of my floor and I will all study together in the Shilling Study Lounge. I started the program initially because a lot of my residents (at least 7) and I are enrolled in PSY 100, Intro to Psych. We had our first exam this morning (it was way easy) and so I decided to host the program for all of us to get together to go over the material. The program ended up being opened up to anyone who wanted to come, and 13 of my residents attended! It went really well, and those of us covering Psych went over a ton of stuff and answered a lot of questions. It was pretty fun, too. My residents expressed to me later that they felt really confident for the test. Realizing that for many of them this would be their first college exam, I went over some things to expect on test day (student ID checking, leaving after you finish the exam, etc.) and I think that put a lot of nerves at ease. It was great.

I also worked the desk last night from 11pm-2am and I will do that every Wednesday night. It was long, and boring. But one resident from 5th Ackley was working with me, so that made it a little more interesting.

The residents are still testing the boundaries with me. Two of them were documented for playing hall sports after I warned them several times. Luckily I wasn't the one to document them, but I'm pretty sure they knew I was involved in it. After the documentation, I had a talk with one of them, and just explained the policy again and told him that he was the one who made the decision to keep playing hall sports after I had told him not to. He understood, and I think it was really good to follow up with him after the incident.

I've started to see some really good friendships forming on my hall. I think my residents are really enjoying living on 1st Shilling. I have one open room, for two girls, and I've had some people talking about wanted to move to my floor. It's really nice to hear that the work that I'm doing for my residents and the community I'm trying to facilitate is appreciated.

One thing I think really helps me relate to my residents is the fact that I am very close in age to all of them. I just went through what they are going through now, so it is very fresh in my mind how they may be feeling. I think they feel comfortable talking to me about things because of how close in age we are. I have three residents that are older than me, and a few that are only a month or two younger. Lots of them are only 7 or 8 months younger than me.

Other than that not much to report! School is going well. I'm very busy...but loving every minute of it!!