Welcome to a new year!

Book I'm currently reading: Dolly (it's a German book I used to LOVE when I was growing up...well actually I still love it)

On my To-Do List for today: figure out sub-committees for the Tunnel of Oppression, revise CHANGE Pre-Test, fix NRHH Web site, compile information for the Annual Report about Opening


Week 1 is officially over. The students have moved in, their classes have started, and I'm trying to get into a routine for the year. It's a new year, my third year at this institution, and most likely my last year. The Spring may bring some "interesting" entries on this blog as I go through job search No. 2 and once again try to face the challenges of immigration laws, the stress of interviewing and the ambiguity of not knowing where I'll be next year. Where do I want to be? I have no idea. I'd like to live in a "more exciting" area of the country. I like ResLife, but I also wouldn't say no to student leadership, orientation or student activities. Do I want to move up to a coordinator position in ResLife or stick with an entry-level job? Again, I have no idea. So you'll be able to come along on this journey as I try to make the most of year 3 while trying to figure out what the future will bring.

Year 3 has definitely not been dull so far. By now, I know the job, I know this institution, but ResLife has a tendency of not letting you sit back and relax but always throwing the unexpected at you.
First there was our professional staff training. As former chair of the training committee that meant lots of worrying about how training would go, anxiety about colleague's reactions, attempts to accept the changes in training that had occurred over the summer and frustration over - well, that list would be too long for just one blog entry. ;) No, overall, training wasn't bad. At least, that's what I thought. Presenters were relatively prepared. The sessions seemed to have a decent flow. There wasn't enough in-hall and team time; days were too long. But what can you do when you have to fit academic advising training, Residence Life training and all these new Residential Curriculum sessions into three weeks of training? Staff were frustrated at the length of our community council training session (3 hours this year compared to just an hour in past years) and I agree that the first half may have been cut a lot, but I thought overall it was a helpful session. I, who presented the second half with a colleague, was frustrated at the lack of enthusiasm the returners showed - they say they don't want to be lectured at, but when you include activities and experiential learning initiatives they don't participate. SERIOUSLY!!!! That just makes me mad! I understand that training is long and can be dull, but it's not like they did such a fabulous job with councils last year that they couldn't need the refresher. And what about all those expectations we set during the returner retreat about being positive???
I guess that's one of the things I learned during training: It's easy to set these expectations and talk about holding each other accountable, but it's anything but easy to actually go through with it. I'll definitely have to add that to my list of areas I need to improve in.

Once professional staff training was over, the RAs moved in and their training started. What a disaster! Some of the sessions were simply terrible. Staff was not prepared to present. I only had one presentation - and since I had taken the initiative to get work started on every single professional staff training session that I was involved with, I wanted to see if my two co-presenter would take the iniative this time. What a mistake! Two days prior to the presentation, I still hadn't heard from them. I finally gave in and, once again, took the lead on the presentation, just to have them get mad at me when I tried to involve my RAs in the presentation (I thought it was our goal as a department to have returning RAs help with training presentations)...apparently they thought there were too many presenters now.
But at least I had my staff. They were fantastic! Even though they did not enjoy every training session - and often had good feedback to share with me - they kept a positive attitude, participated and tried to stay enthusiastic and energetic. They are quite the exceptional group of student leaders and I'm sure you'll hear a lot more about them.
As if going through RA Training during the day and facilitating in-hall training at night and struggling with co-presenters wouldn't keep me busy enough, I was also kept busy with other things: one of my RAs was dealing with some personal issues and that kept me pretty occupied. Things are much better now, but there were definitely several nights where I just didn't know what else to do.

Now the year has really started. I'm teaching a course for my living learning community - fortunately I have two teaching assistants, two of my RAs, so that helps with the workload. I am chairing our Social Justice Committee, which means I get to oversee the planning and implementation of our Tunnel of Oppression (a program that raises awareness about oppression...some of you may be familiar with it as it's pretty popular around the country). I'm also co-advising the National Residence Hall Honorary again. Yes, it definitely won't be a boring year.

Welcome to Year 3 at my institution and Year 4 of blogging. :)