Talking Stick - November/December 2015 - 50

O

On a recent Wednesday, Jane Rose, a resident assistant
at the University of Florida in Gainesville, walked back
to her room after a long day of classes. The first week
of school had already brought her a relatively heavy
homework load, and she was looking forward to a few
minutes of relaxing before cracking open the books for
the evening. Since she arrived on campus two weeks
earlier, Jane had not had a lot of time to herself; resident
assistant training, while helpful, was a whirlwind. She had
spent the entire previous week helping her new residents get
settled in the hall and begin to form the connections they would
need for a successful year. Jane had promised herself she would
catch up on one episode of her favorite T.V. show while eating a simple
dinner - and then it would be down to business.
As she approached her room, Jane noticed a message scrawled on
her whiteboard: "Please come see me ASAP! I need help! From Christy
in room 112." Jane's heart skipped a beat as she went into crisis response
mode; for a minute, she was mentally back in the role-playing exercise
they had done during resident assistant training. She played back the
previous week in her mind, trying to recall any conversations she had
conducted with Christy or anything she had noticed that might give her
some clue about this urgent request. All she could recall was noticing that
the interactions between Christy and her parents had been pretty tense on
move-in day.
Taking a deep breath, Jane proceeded down the hall and knocked
on the door to room 112. Christy answered the door; it was evident from
her red eyes and the tissues in her hand that she had been crying. Heart
still pounding, Jane heard herself say, "What's wrong, Christy? I saw
your note and came by as soon as I could." Whatever had gone through
her head in the last few minutes, Jane was not expecting what she heard
next. "I just came out to both my roommate and my parents, and now I'm
pretty sure they hate me."
Over the next few days, Jane worked closely with her area coordinator
and other professional staff in her department to help Christy have more
conversations with her roommate and provided her with resources to
help her start them with her parents. Although it was an intense several
days, Jane happily reported to her supervisor the following week that the
residents in question were in a safe and comfortable living environment.
If you work in residence life, this story probably has a familiar ring to
it. Even if the issue is different, the nature of the work is similar: res life
staff must juggle the demands of the personal and the professional nearly
all the time. These staff work unexpected hours, tackle heavy issues, and
work with their supervisors in a way that other student employees would
likely never be able to do. And they do it all to help fellow residential
students.
Now, we look within residence life and education, at the partners
who are in our halls every day and every night: our student staff. There
is no doubt that residence life student staff face unique challenges,
even beyond those of our live-in professional staff. Living where you
work, juggling the demands of a job in addition to an academic load,
and holding your peers accountable can be stressful for student staff.
As we found over and over again in our blog series, when looking at
any partners within housing, it all comes down to relationships. Ashlyn

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Talking Stick - November/December 2015

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