Monday, May 11, 2009

Not just the end of another year...

I closed my building on Friday. It was one of the smoothest closing I've ever had. No, of course everything didn't go over perfectly. There was the student who refused to clean his room. There were the two or three students who just left and didn't check out. There was the student, who at 7 pm, when the building was supposed to be closed, just started packing and said, "Oh, I didn't realize we had to be out by 7." Really? Like it hasn't been in every newsletter for the past month and a half, on a toilet talk posted in every toilet stall and on every bulletin board in the hall.
But the staff what they were supposed to do - check rooms, make sure refrigerators were clean, asking students to go back and clean more if necessary. Yeah, there was the one time I came to the Lobby and they were all playing video games and not really paying attention and nobody would get up when a student said she needed to be checked out; but after I asked them to pay better attention, they did and soon even turned off the video games.

There are so many reasons I need to get out of here, but my staff is definitely one of them. I couldn't have asked for a better staff for my last year here. They weren't perfect but they tried. I didn't have to worry about most of them; they did their job. Sometimes I felt like they could have run the building without me. They put their residents' needs first; they built relationships and helped their students with their transition to college. And after some pushing, most of them really embraced the idea of challenging our students to think about more serious topic and to initiate meaningful conversations.

I've also never had that hard of a time saying goodbye to a staff. I've become very close with many of them. In the past I've had RAs move on to other staff or not return as an RA - but they were always at the institution for at least another year and we knew we'd see each other occasionally. So we had that time to grow apart when we weren't living and working in the same building anymore and when they graduated, it was easier to say goodbye. This year, for the first time, I had RAs from my staff graduate and with me leaving, I had to say goodbye to all of them. I'm not good at saying goodbye. I just try to avoid it, not think about it, and then deal with it later. One of my RAs started crying when we said goodbye...that's never happened to me before. I felt like crying myself but was trying to be strong. I'm going to miss them....

No comments: