This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at U Wyoming chapter.
Many people live the dream of a Resident Assistant/Residential Advisor/Community Leader etc. Whatever they call themselves, they assist and facilitate with community building within residential communities on college campuses. Kudos to you if you’re an RA (or some variation of the title). If you’re not an RA, but want to know how to spot one, below are the signs of an RA:
Opening day happens after weeks of training, and you’re literally so excited.
Your first floor meeting happens, where you try to lay out the basic rules of living in a residence hall.
You plan great programs about acclimating to college life, and a driving reason for attendance could be the free cookies.
That doesn’t get you down though. You love when people attend programs because you’re building community! So you basically feel like:
Then the first round of tests hit. Your residents’ reaction:
But you got this, you’ve done this college thing for at least a year. You offer them resources and also soothing words.
When people tell you how much they hate RAs, you can’t help but respond like so:
In all honesty, you can’t help that some people make poor choices. Sometimes those poor choices lead to the police being called.
You know that at the end of the day, there are no bad students. Just students who make bad choices. So you try your hardest to help them grow and learn to make better choices.
Then you feel that wonderful feeling when one of your residents says you inspired them to want to be an RA.
When the semester ends and your residents leave, you feel sad to see them go, but happy for a short break before everything begins again.
And finally, you may be an RA if this resonates with you: don’t forget to submit OTMs
