Holidays.

Exams are done. First semester is done. Everyone is back home. The hall is bare, lifeless and boring. Leaving here means annual leave, which is something unnecessary to me. I live 20 minutes away anyway. But not leaving makes the holidays even worse. I would have the same amount of nothing to do either way, but here is a constant reminder of everyone you’re missing. Residents who drive me absolutely crazy some times, suddenly don’t seem as bad. Their subtle flaws that drove me mad during study break are now forgotten.

You can try to keep in contact with people, residents and friends,  Facebooking them and Snapchatting. But it is through those same forms of contact that the problem is made worse. Every “seen” Snapchat or “read” message may simply mean there’s nothing to reply with, but you can’t help but feel that whoever it is you’re chatting to is having more fun. But why shouldn’t they?! They’ve earned this break like you, you aren’t mad with them but rather jealous. So you sit there in your room on social media, sleeping and playing video games, occasionally travelling outside for some fresh air. And you count down until people are back, til there are people to talk to in the common room or yarn with at dinner, and that’s so incredibly wrong.

Holidays for me have never been exciting, and I don’t know how to fix it. You spend the whole semester counting down the days until holidays, but once they’re here you count down until they’re over…

Balance

One thing I’ve noticed so far as an RA is the amazing amount of balance required to keep your life healthy. What’s even more amazing to me is the severe lack of training or fore-warning about this need for balance or how to set about dealing with it. Balance is in many forms; you need to find the right balance between being a good RA and being a pedantic RA who is too strict and alienates themselves from the hall. You need the right balance between being being there for your residents and being too close that it inhibits your ability to perform your job properly. You need to find that balance between doing enough of your job, and keeping up with academics. Most of all, you need to find a balance between your hall life, and your life outside of the hall.

Being too strict can often be a tough one, but one I feel I have done well so far. It can be difficult to go from being friendly with residents to pulling them up for something that they have done wrong, without damaging the relationship you have with them. What has worked so far is treating the residents as people, as equals in a way, so that they respect you for you and not because they have to as you are an authority figure. You don’t like to tell off the residents, but when you have to at least they understand that they are in the wrong and that you are doing your job and not just being an asshole. There are so many rules in the hall, and at times you often let little things slide. RA training teaches us that we should use the rules at our discretion where we feel it is appropriate, but this then means there is a huge amount of grey area. This grey area is what keeps you constantly doubting yourself, constantly wondering if you were too strict or should have done something a different way. But this grey area is what keeps you doing your job properly and not getting complacent, in my opinion at least.

We’re told that we should be friends with our residents, but not their buddies. However I think that almost every RA of a first year hall would agree that it is incredibly hard to not form bonds with your residents. You are living with these people all year, eating every meal with them and doing activities with them daily. It’s nearly impossible not to become close. Because of the nature of the job you don’t see your friends as much as before, and because of this you become friends with your floor. You naturally grow fondness for those who would be your friends in “real life” or those who you have an admiration for. You start to have favourites. It’s not allowed, and you pretend that you don’t but inevitably you will always have residents you would prefer to talk to. This is the problem. If you get too close with your residents you get favourites, you become close with them and it makes telling them off that much harder. However if you distance yourself too much then your residents don’t see you, don’t interact with you so you lose any connection there. And that connection is vital.

Being an RA means that your weekends are almost always busy. You have meetings every week, and at least once a week you’re on duty. During this time, realistically you won’t get any study done at all. Uni is a bitch, and sometimes you can’t handle the workload of it. Add on RA responsibilities and it becomes overwhelming, depressing even. There’s no way around it either. If you focus too much on your RA job then you won’t get in enough study, so you’ll not do as well at uni. Focus too much on academics and you alienate yourself from the rest of the RAs and the residents. Either way you’re screwed. Oh, I forgot to mention to try and balance both you lose a shitload of sleep.

The worst though is the balance between the hall and the outside world. I promised myself that I would keep some form of social life once I became an RA because almost every RA always loses it. I didn’t want that to be me, and to a certain extent it hasn’t. But it also kind of has. You lose touch with those who aren’t your very close friends. Those people who you would always be friendly with and do stuff with but who didn’t know a huge amount about you, the “second-tier friends”. It makes you realise who you really want to be close with, and the people that you want around you. You still get invited to things but suddenly there’s a hall activity or event almost every time, or you are on duty. The less you go though, the more you alienate yourself from those friends. And you lose them. And it sucks. But if you spend too much time trying to keep your social circles in tact, you don’t put as much time and effort as you should into your job meaning there is a lack of balance there. Do this and you lose respect from the residents and your RA team. You’re fucked either way.

I quit the sport I had played for 13 years for this job, just so I could have more time to do RA responsibilities and academics. I walked away from the sport that I loved, with the people that made it so fun, all to make finding a balance just that bit easier. This means that I now don’t enjoy anything, I’m not honestly ever happy and only ever fine. But hey, at least I’m able to kind of strike this magical balance nobody ever talks about.

But for some messed-up reason that makes no sense to me at all, I don’t blame the job at all. In all honesty I’ll probably do it again next year.

 

Being a Resident Advisor

Most people become Resident Advisors to help give first year students a great first year experience. Some do it for the free rent. Of course I did it to help people, but I truly think that no RA really knows exactly what they are getting into, and what the consequences on your social life and mental health can be. I thought that I may as well document what it has been like so far, as well as continue this throughout to really highlight what it’s like from someone actually in the role.

 

It’s incredibly rewarding:

This is probably the best thing about being an RA so far. You form amazing bonds with residents, and I can honestly say there is nothing better than when you see everyone getting along and everyone included. There are residents that you instantly highlight as ones to potentially worry about, the shy and quiet ones  or those who don’t fit in with the norm, and it’s incredibly rewarding and heartwarming when you see those same residents right in the middle of a conversation or activity. Another thing that really makes you love your job is when residents come to you for help/advice. While it may be irritating to try remember some things, it’s awesome to know that they feel you are someone they can talk to and someone they can trust.

Sometimes, you’re going to be the bad guy:

At least where I am, the legal drinking age is 18. This brings the constant challenge of making sure that residents are drinking responsibly. This includes making them split boxes etc to stay under the 2L limit, tipping out any spirits and making sure there is no drinking after 10pm. Generally people are quite polite when you tell them off, but when they are slightly too drunk they can become aggressive or extremely defensive. The only way to really combat this is to make sure you form positive relationships with residents, meaning they respect you more.

You’ll have to make sacrifices:

Inevitably, being an RA means you’re rostered on at times you really don’t want to be. Personally, I gave up football to become an RA after playing it for 13 years and I miss it every single day. When you sign your contract, you are signing a legally binding document to say that you will only miss RA stuff for academics. This means that all of a sudden you may have to miss parties or family events if there is something going on at the hall that you have to attend. While you can see friends etc. whenever you aren’t on duty, even having to say no to friends once or twice due to duty has a knock-on effect meaning there are less invites in the future.

You’ll lose some friends:

Being honest, it can be lonely being an RA sometimes. Coming into the RA job after being a resident, it’s an incredibly different set-up. When I was a resident there were 32 other people on my floor who I could hang with and just mess around with. There were always people there to yarn to and have dmc’s with. As an RA, you still have the people on your floor but you’re not their best friend. You’re not there to become best mates with them, you’re there to do a job. While it’s great to have good bonds with your residents, you can’t become close with any of them and definitely can’t do anything that may compromise your position as an RA. This means that you then have to rely on those friends you have already made. This is where I have done badly so far, as I have really only relied on a couple of friends and I have definitely relied on them too much, which isn’t fair on them. I’ve started to talk to those people I stopped talking to over the summer, and hope to catch up with them soon. Many RAs become very close, I don’t know if it’s because we are all in the same boat but several RAs become very very good friends. For me, I just don’t feel I could be close with more than one or two of the RA team. In saying that, we are very tight and I know almost all of the RAs would have my back.

You’re always working:

Because you live where you work, even when not on duty you’re always an RA. You can’t really slack off. Sure you can relax, but you are always in the spotlight and always have to set an example. Some RAs forget this, and will call the duty RA to sort out issues that they should be sorting out themselves. If you don’t act, it looks like you don’t care.

Your team may get on your nerves:

This one is inevitable, no matter how hard you try. There will always be people in the team you don’t like as much as others, ones that get on your nerves. There will be times that an RA doesn’t show up to something they should be at, or times when an RA says or does something that you feel is unprofessional and it will really get on your nerves. This is difficult because you really just have to put up with it. There are RAs that will ham it up in the team meetings, and make it sound like they are the best RA in front of management and you just have to hope that they can see right through the act.

You’ll need good time management:

As RAs we have to each run 6 events throughout the year, I’m already on five. Each event requires hours of preparation. Different events require different prep, but they all take time. It could be a sports team that you have to run trials for and then organise on the day, or it could be running a week-long event for 330 people that requires constant updating all by yourself. We all have busy schedules with uni, it’s not fun and it’s not easy, and you really have to make sure you balance your time well. In saying that, it’s essential to take a step back and have some time for yourself or you will probably go crazy.

So far though, even with some of the difficulties, I have loved every minute of being an RA. So far it’s been challenging and even frustrating but it’s incredibly rewarding.