Hello all! I am currently one final away from Christmas break, which is extremely exciting. However, because of my position as an RA, I stay at school until the end of finals week and the dorm closes to check out all my residents. I thought you should get to see the door decs and bulletin board for this month’s programming…
The months of November and December have brought with them a season of change. Of course, they are part of the most stressful time of the year for college students everywhere because, one word- finals.
No, this year was different. In the past month and a half, a huge role model in my life here at the university has gone on to different things. She was more than my supervisor. As some of you know, I moved onto campus on August 1st of this year, 24 days before the first day of class, 10 days before fall athletes would move in, and 23 days before everyone else. This woman fed, trained, and entertained 8 RAs for that amount of time every single day. She became our mom away from home. As the semester continued, she checked in on us as a group every week. And then she checked on us individually every week. About a month ago, out of the blue, we were told she wouldn’t be returning to the university.
I was heartbroken. 4 of the 8 RAs quit the day we found out. Students began to pass around a petition to sign to show that the students were angry. We went a week with basically no one in charge of us. The only word that could sum up that week was chaos. Incidents were happening left and right in the dorms and us RAs were having to deal with them essentially on our own. In the midst of all that, the RAs were expected to deal with the students, put on our programming events, put up our door decs and bulletin boards, keep up our grades, get over the loss of our supervisor, and keep a smile plastered on our faces. By far, that was the hardest week of my semester, and many other people’s.
I think we can all agree that those of us in college are at a weird stage in our lives. It looks different for everyone, but basically we are in a battle between being a kid, being a student, and adulting. We are the “in between.” Honestly, it’s a weird stage. Handling that week (that felt like a month) was what I like to call a growing pain. It was hard. It was weird. It was unfair. I didn’t like it. But I made it through.
I know that these “growing pains” won’t stop happening. After all, what is life about if not growth? We are constantly learning and growing, and yeah, sometimes it’s gonna be painful. Sometimes, it won’t feel like it’s worth it. But it’s not impossible.
I still miss my supervisor like crazy. In fact, it’s one of the things that makes me emotional after only a few seconds of talking about it. But things happen, life happens, we grow.
And it hurts.
But afterwards, we stand a little taller and we’re a little stronger.
