Here’s yet another article about being a resident assistant, aka an RA. As exhausted as I get with balancing everything, I genuinely am thankful for my job and my residents. Being an RA has helped me with feeling like I have a purpose in life, especially since I love helping people and socializing. I feel like being a busy social butterfly has become my entire personality.
Some of the responsibilities that RAs have are monthly passive boards (or the bulletin boards on every floor in the dorms), monthly programs where residents come and enjoy free stuff and food, dealing with roommate conflicts, and doing 1:1 where we check in on our residents. In my opinion, the 1:1 meetings are the most important part of the job because the residents are basically on their own and sometimes don’t confide everything with their friends. That’s where I would come in and just be a shoulder to cry on and a listening ear.
My favorite parts of my job are programming and interacting with residents.
With programming, I have the flexibility to create an event from scratch and see it come to fruition. Depending on the topic of the program, I can put my entire heart into planning it. An example would be my “Smooth Like Butter” program that I held in the beginning of the Spring 2022 semester. I gave tips for my Freshmen to start their Spring semester smooth and it was, as you can guess, BTS-themed!! I partnered with one of my super good friends who also stans BTS, and we made it one of our best programs to date. We had such a successful program that we are currently planning a whole Kpop event that’ll have random play dance and Korean food. (By the time this article gets published, we would have had the program by then!!)
But don’t just take my word on why it’s awesome being an RA. I interviewed a bunch of my colleagues to find out their favorite parts of being an RA.
“In all honesty, my old RA made me want to become one. In the beginning of my Freshman year, I had an RA who was assigned multiple floors who I never saw and wasn’t very active in our community. [Which] was understandable because of how hard it is to balance a schedule but I got a new one close to the midway point in the first semester of the school year. Immediately, I met my new RA and they were the most kind-hearted, welcoming human I’ve met on campus and they always provided a welcoming place to go to if it was ever needed. Because of that experience with the new RA, I decided that I wanted to become one so I could help others the way they helped me, especially when I had to learn everything alone as a freshmen and wish I had someone like them in my life earlier.
Something I definitely love about being an RA would be having my own residents. My main goal for the academic year was for my residents to form a family-like bond with one another and they did! They even include me in it. I can’t walk within a two minute radius from my room and not have people wave or scream my name to say hi to me, and I love it. They come to me because they trust me as someone they are safe to come to and get support whenever needed. My entire floor has become a group of friends that are family and that’s something I love because it’s a really unique feeling and accomplishment that’s really reassuring and wholesome to witness and be a part of.”
-RA Hailey
“My old RA made me want to apply to be an RA. I already loved programming because I was in Student Council so seeing an opportunity to program as an RA made me apply. My favorite part of being an RA is definitely the programming, planning out monthly programs for the residents. It’s fun to just see an idea come to life.”
-RA “Jimin’s Girlfriend”
“My old RA also made me want to apply as an RA. I love the creative aspect of being an RA. I was super excited to be able to decorate my own floor and make my own door decorations.”
-RA Anthony
“My favorite part of the job is how it makes you grow as an individual. I’ve grown so much this past year and being an RA really made me go through that change.”
-RA Kyla
I also received a numerous amount of “free housing and meals” answers. So if you’re interested in being an RA, there are so many things people love about the job, and the housing and meals is just the cherry on top!