My rockin' New Residence RA Staff! From left to right: Marty, me, Wayne, Angela, Elaine, Christina, and Ryan. John and Ellen not pictured.
Tom was the one who inspired me to become a Resident Advisor. He has been an RA since his junior year and during that year I learned a lot from his position vicariously. At that time I was somewhat introverted and scared of being forced to meet and work with people, although my 5 years of being a waitress in my parent's fine dining restaurant really polished my people skills. I felt I wasn't ready to take that next step to working intimately with a team. Although waiting tables involved teamwork, RAing would be having to work much more closely with peers of all kinds, and I wasn't sure if I was ready to do that. Sure enough with Tom's encouragement, I applied for the position, and I got in. Yay! Now I am happily integrated into my lovely RA staff and am having a great time!
As an RA I have the responsibility of watching over 38 rowdy Virginia Tech Hokies on the first floor of New Residence Hall East. This includes their behavioral, mental, psychological, emotional, and physical well-being, as well as their criminal tendencies. I am the "wise-woman" they go to to seek academic / campus advice.....to them, I am like a female Yoda (I used a Star Wars character...is that kinda geeky? I'm not geeky, I swear..). I also have facility responsibilities over the entire building of East and also West when I am on duty (weekly), and I have to work (and get along) with 8 other disgruntled RAs. HA!
Handing out judicial referrals is uncommon, as I monitor an upperclassmen dorm, and they know all the tricks already. However, the West building is mostly freshmen, and they're still learning the ropes. So far I've had about three JR incidents,..some of them got pretty ugly, but majority of the time, it was amusing.
But really, mostly we just screw around and have fun ;).
Here's another pic of all of us (John's in this one):
