Kate Wofford Hall (Part 2)

Suddenly, I was hearing all these new words – incidence reports, socials, hall meetings, hall council, staff development, desk staff, on-call nights, desk duty, master keys and retainer keys, purchasing cards, etc., and I was overwhelmed!! I was in charge of an 8-floor building and 8 RA’s, and I wondered what I had gotten myself into. I was about to begin a rigorous graduate program, and I had signed up for what was turning into a full time job! Teaching assistant didn’t sound so bad to me anymore! At RD training, a very sweet girl named Carla who had been an RD for 2 or 3 years was assigned as my mentor, and I don’t think I would have made it through those first few weeks without her answering my endless questions.

So, what was my job all about? Well, let me start with the RA’s first. They were in charge on their hall. They were there to handle any problems or situations that came up with their residents, just as you would expect. However, the girls were also in charge of creating monthly bulletin boards for their hall, planning periodic hall socials, planning building-wide socials, being a member of a Residence Life committee (along with RA’s from other buildings on campus), having a duty night each week in which they had to do three walk-throughs of the building (which I recently found out they NEVER did!!) share a duty weekend each month with another RA, work desk hours at the font desk of our hall, post hours in which they would be in their room available to their residents, write incidence reports on their residents when they got in trouble (fights, drinking, drugs … you name it – the residents did it), stay late and come back early to open and close the building before holidays and summers, attend weekly staff meetings, and complete “other duties as assigned” which they always "loved." All that on top of actually being a student and trying to live a normal college life! My job was basically to be a support for my RA’s. I had to attend a weekly staff meeting with the other RD’s on campus, the AD’s, and the Director of Residence Life, then share that information in the staff meetings within my building. I also had to work desk hours, have an on-call weekend two months per semester (for the whole campus), review incidence reports, and try to keep up with everything going on in the building. I had all of these responsibilities and not a clue what I was doing! However, I was about to meet my RA's ....