A day in the life of an RA

Life as an RA (Residence Assistant) is a pretty sweet job. You get to hang out with your fellow RAs, make friends with all the incoming frosh and returning students and earn some money while doing it. As potentially incoming students, you won't be assuming the role of RA (at least not until your second year that is!), but RAs will play a big part in your life while you live in residence, which I hope you'll all be doing! (Photo - Ryan and I on duty for Harper's toga party!)

Alright, so what exactly does an RA do? First off, they're older students (so either 2nd, 3rd or 4th year students, but 2nd year seems to be the trend) who are employed by the University through Student Life to kind of act like older brothers and sisters to those living in residence. They do all the typical stuff like making sure that everyone is following quiet hours which are different in every residence though the average seems to be starting at 10:00pm on weeknights and starting at 2:00am on weekend nights. They're able to fine students in the residence who break rules and the money goes to the residence house council in most cases. The RAs get the fine money for things that they have to deal with personally, such as... vomit. Ah vomit, what a fun part of the job this lovely substance has turned out to be. But more about that later.Stephen, hanging out with some frosh during a weekend duty :)

But other than the kind of run of the mill things that an RA can do for you, they're trained to be prepared for all kinds of different situations from fire alarms to suicide intervention to boyfriend/girlfriend issues to academic problems to course selections. Basically, your RA is there to help you with whatever they can, to listen to what you have to say and to point you in the right direction when you need more than they can give you. As an RA, I was surprised to find how incredibly rewarding it became to be the person that others turned to for help and guidance in a number of very different situations. I was also surprised how much I came to care about the people on my wing and how quickly we became like an actual family. Everyone on my wing seems to know where the others are at any given time, who has construction paper you can borrow, who so and so has started dating, who's turn it is for recycling or who's birthday is coming up on the weekend. There are no secrets in residence, and when living in this kind of environment with 19 other people, you can't help but feel attached, proud of and close to the people you live with. (Photo: Dancing frosh on their way to the Pub!)

One of the more visible roles of an RA is what we like to call "duty". As an RA you typically have three duties per month - one Thursday night, one Friday night and one Saturday night. There are two RAs on duty each night and their job is to sign residents' guests into the building, make sure everyone and everything is running smoothly throughout the house and generally deal with any issues that come up. Some typical things that we deal with are hilarious residents who may or may not be slightly inebriated, breaking up overly rambunctious room parties, hanging out with lovely visitors, cleaning up/dealing with vomit in all of its wonderful forms (the least fun part of the job, but also what happens the least), and occasionally putting out fires in the outdoor garbage can, hahaha. Definitely fun when you get to whip out the fire extinguisher... bahaha. Well fun, but not funny, because fires are serious... ahem. (Photo - Members of a Celtic gang (?) offering entertainment for RAs on duty.)

So yeah, being an RA is a seriously fun job, though there are certainly moments when you just don't want to deal with overly loud techno music at two in the morning or really have the time to listen to the same story about so and so's cheating boyfriend. But hey, we do it because we love it and because we love the people we live and work with, and at the end of the day it's all worth while and I wouldn't change it for the world.

Much love,

Sue

sjhumphrey@mta.ca