What I've Learned As a Freshman RA

Moving into a dorm is one of the biggest adjustments for freshmen living on campus. As if rooming with a stranger and sharing a single bathroom with a dozen other girls aren’t tough enough, you also have to deal with that darn RA who always seems to be busting you for something and butting into your business. You know, that stranger you met on the first day who greeted you with a cheesy smile, helped you move your stuff in, answered your parents’ barrage of questions, and repeated five million times to let her know if you needed anything.

Yup, that’s me. I’m currently an RA in an all-freshmen building at the University of Rochester. It’s definitely been a crazy, entertaining, and interesting school year so far, and yes, I’ve been through it all: being woken up at 4 a.m. for lockouts, mediating roommate conflicts over boyfriends staying the night or food being stolen, and knocking on doors to break up parties, only to wait in the hall for five minutes to the whispers of “Shoot guys! It’s my RA!” and the clinking of plastic cups and ping pong balls.

Being an RA has, of course, involved enforcing school policy as well as serving as a resource for my residents. But what have I learned from them (besides the fact that wearing your ID card on a lanyard around your neck is the equivalent of tattooing FRESHMAN on your forehead)? What does an RA get out of living in a building full of freshmen? Here are some of the most important, and unexpected, lessons I’ve learned, and the true stories that went along with them.  
 

Don’t take everything so seriously.

As a second semester junior with graduation requirements to squeeze in, and grad school and job applications on the horizon, it’s so easy to get stressed and caught up in the chaos of figuring out exactly what it is I’m doing with my life. Taking classes all day with other juniors and seniors in the same position doesn’t help either. But whenever I’m around my hall, whether I’m on duty, hanging out, or just stopping in between lab and marathon cram sessions in the library, there’s always bound to be something fun, funny, or just unexpected going on that reminds me to not be so disillusioned by growing up. Being silly every once in a while is still important and necessary, something only my freshmen could’ve shown me.

Here are a few of my favorite cases:

• As I was finishing up rounds one night, I walked past what used to be my hall lounge. Instead of seeing the ugly gray carpet and ripped blue couches, I stood before a huge fort made from white bed sheets draped from the fire sprinklers and ceiling tiles, chairs from people’s rooms arranged neatly inside as tables for chips and dip and soda, mounds of pillows on the ground as makeshift mattresses, and colorful blankets stretched across the walls and windows. Allowed? No. A complete fire hazard? Yes. But creative and totally awesome? Definitely.
• My sister RA and I sent out an email to all of our residents requesting ideas for a new hall theme. One resident, replying to all 44 residents, suggested: “Penises. They are not only unique and inventive, but passers-by will stop and say, ‘Look at Gilbert 2 West, they have penises all over their wall.’” A week later, he followed up with “Have we decided what theme we’re going with? I’m only asking because there’s a special on skin-colored mural paper down at Crafts ‘n’ Shafts.” Inappropriate, but hilarious, and if anything, inside jokes like this amongst halls are always good for bonding.
• For my twentieth birthday, one of my residents lovingly bought me a dinosaur coloring book from the dollar section at CVS, complete with two full pages of dinosaur stickers. It was quite thoughtful and actually the perfect gift, you know, since I’m a studio art major and all.

Having a kitchen can be either really good or really bad.

Freshman dorms are not equipped with very many luxuries. While freshmen are required to live on campus at my school, the nicer apartments and suite-style buildings are open to upperclassmen only. We make do with what we have though, and definitely take advantage of the communal kitchen, which is shared by two freshman halls. Even though it’s tiny and without a fridge or dishwasher, it’s still pretty convenient and nice to have. (You’ve got to cook those Ramen noodles somewhere, right?) But because college is the first time many freshmen have actually had to cook and clean up in a kitchen by themselves, it’s not always pretty.

There have been several lessons I’ve learned, besides the fact that our smoke detectors work quite well and will conveniently go off at 2 a.m. when someone forgets about their food on the stove, for example:

• Follow your nose. Since freshman halls are so cramped, it’s impossible not to smell the aroma of cookies or brownies or some other delicious concoction brewing in the kitchen. I’ve discovered that those are the perfect occasions to just happen to realize that I need to fill up my Brita water pitcher. The kitchen sink is the easiest place to do this of course, and this gives me an excuse to casually mooch off of whoever’s cooking. After all, food is a great way to make friends and sharing whatever you make is great for keeping the freshman 15 off!
• Some things just can’t be explained. It amazed me last semester, and still confuses me to this day, how an entire bottle of dish detergent that my sister RA kindly bought for everyone to share managed to be completely used up in one week, while piles of dirty dishes with mold, fungi, and other unidentified microorganisms growing in them were still sitting in the sink and on the countertop each and every day. I don’t know where all that soap went but it clearly was not being used for dishes.

• A dorm kitchen can be a danger zone. This is an actual text I received from one of my residents: “Hey just a heads up, our hall kinda smells like burnt food and smoke right now because i was trying to warm up a cookie in the microwave and it caught on fire and started smoking.. :( we read the ingredients and the second ingredient in the cookie is iron! Poisonous cookies.. :(“ This type of thing happens quite often and isn’t that big of a deal as long as the fire alarm doesn’t go off, and walking back to a hall of smoke just becomes another reminder that I live in a freshman hall.