Resident Advisor

Creating A Home Away From Home For Residents

Helping Others

I genuinely enjoy helping others and am always willing and ready to lend a helping hand. Through the Residential Advisor role, I put effort into giving assistance to my residents and team because I care about the people I work with. For example, if my team member needs to swap an on-call shift, I would volunteer when I can, or if my residents need help with a personal conflict issue, I would help out. I think helping others is an inherent value for me and helps me build strong relationships with others and good environments. And this experience has given me several opportunities to support others and build lasting relationships. 

Mentoring

Through this position, I exemplify a role model to my residents and am a resource to residents with questions about college, majors, and any other questions they have. During my second time around at the RA role, I have gained more experience since I am in my third year, and I’ve also gained experience through other positions I have held, therefore I used my experiences to share resources and give advice to my residents if they have questions. I helped develop a greater sense of community and foster trust and planning. In one particular instance, my resident, a freshman, came and asked me questions about major selection, resumes, clubs, involvements, finding mentors for career opportunities, and more; and we had a long conversation, and using my experience, I recommend huskies@work and specific clubs she could learn more about. I also connected her to my friend who is involved in a club she is interested in joining. Through the experience, I’ve learned how to share my experiences and knowledge with people in a way that sets them up for success.

Positive Attitude

An important aspect of working where I live is that I am constantly surrounded by my residents and I’ve found that I can’t leave or go back to my room without seeing and saying hi to a resident. But everyone has their good, neutral, and off days, yet I’ve found that I almost always can exhibit an optimistic outlook to my residents and maximize the positive aspects of the situation by asking about their day. Also, I value optimism and believe that my actions have an impact on others, so I try to remember that when interacting with my residents or the team, in hopes that I can foster a positive and optimistic environment that makes others feel happy, and maybe if they were having a bad day, I stay optimistic so that I can contribute to a glimpse of joy in their day.

Problem Solving

Throughout the role, I face challenges posed by my residents or other aspects of the job where I have to identify and examine the problem, develop and assess possible solutions, and select the best solution to the problem. For instance, during move-in, residents and parents with cars were asked to have someone stay with the car, however, there were two cars that were left alone and for a long time. I coordinated with other RAs and we took turns calling the cars and got no response from the residents, but we had many cars coming in. And the way I was asked to direct the cars was different from the situation happening, thus, I adapted to the situation and found a better solution in finding places for people to park, while using the space effectively. Through the experience, I’ve had to be adaptable, clearly assess the situation, and quickly find a solution.

Conflict Negotiation

An important part of the RA role is effectively managing disagreements and serving as a resource for the residents to mediate the conversation between roommates when conflict arises. When I encountered a roommate conflict early on in Autumn quarter, I consulted with my Area Director to gain confidence and preparation for approaching the roommate conflict. We established a plan, and I talked to everyone in the room individually to assess the situation and find out the issue and asked if they are willing to have a mediated conversation with me present to facilitate and reestablish ground rules. The next step I took is I made an agenda of things our meeting will be addressing and asking them to come prepared with things they want to discuss. During the meeting with all roommates present, I set the ground rules about respect and trust in the environment and emphasized on the important issues at bay and that living together requires compromise. Through that, I was able to facilitate a conversation with the three roommates, they talked about their issues, and decided and negotiated on the roommate agreements. Through my role, I’ve learned the importance of and how to maintain a neutral party without being biased in a conflict negotiation situation, and I learned to help form trusting and respectful relationships.

Collaboration

During my role as a Residential Advisor, I collaborate with various teammates to create inclusive events for residents, maintain our social media presence, and distribute responsibilities. I often collaborate with my co-RA on the third floor when we create events. One event we created is chalk night. We divided the responsibilities and communicated effectively to ensure efficiency; I created the program proposals including supplies we needed, while she created the marketing materials, and we both emailed our residents to inform them of the event. Working collaboratively, we created an inclusive event that many of our residents enjoyed. Another instance is that we have committees with different responsibilities that each RA will complete, and I was on the marketing team with another RA to maintain social media presence through creating posts and stories. And the way we worked together differed depending on our week; on some weeks, we would each create a post to share – one of us would post during the beginning of the week and the other towards the end of the week – or we would switch off between weeks. While there were times when she forgot to post, a quick text from me and she would immediately create the posts. Through the experience, I’ve learned my preference for collaborative work, even though at times one of us might forget something, but good communication was key in collaboration.

Appropriate Interaction

As a Residential Advisor I have to engage in interactions and build relationships with around 50 residents and my residential hall team. The residents and team members are from diverse backgrounds and going through different stages of their college experiences, thus, I learned the appropriate way to engage and communicate effectively with different people. For instance, my job requires that I set up one-on-one meetings with individual residents, however, I respect my residents’ time and boundaries, so when asking residents to sign up for these meetings, I put a disclaimer letting them know they can opt out of these meetings. Also, when interacting with residents, I’ve learned to first develop a sense of what type of interaction they prefer – more serious and straightforward, fun and chaotic, or etc – and engage in interactions with them. As with my team and supervisor, I’ve learned a balance between professionalism and friendliness depending on the situation.

Receiving Feedback

Receiving feedback is important to develop my capacity and increase effectiveness. At the end of Autumn Quarter, I received a Performance Evaluation from my supervisor, which includes her evaluation rating for me and the feedback from the Autumn Resident Survey my residents filled out. The feedback I received was overwhelmingly positive, with 100% of my residents agreeing I have provided opportunities for residents to engage socially with others in the community, 97.87% agreed I maintain a significant presence in the community, and 95.74% agreed that I have connected with them. My evaluation ratings were all meeting expectations with a few exceeding expectations. Through receiving feedback from my residents and my supervisor, I felt more confident in my role and ability as an RA, and it motivated me to work even harder to continue to meet my residents’ needs and expectations and exceed the expectations of my supervisor. Additionally, in the evaluation meeting with my supervisor, I worked with her to identify areas for growth and establish performance goals. As I continued the role, I wanted to establish a deeper connection with residents and to grow in my ability to build trusting and meaninful relationships with people.

Being an RA is a rewarding experience in self development and mentoring. Through this role, I discovered my passion in working with people and strength in problem solving. I developed my skills with interacting with others and I found myself truly caring about every individual and wanting to help residents. It was easy to display a positive attitude in my role because the people – the team and the residents – made the experience memorable and tolerable. And I enjoyed knowing that I’ve made an impact on residents’ college experience. In regards to the future, an important lesson I learned from being an RA is how the little things can make a big difference; one small act of kindness from me, getting treats for each person, made my residents’ day and even their entire quarter. I hope to connect my experience to my future goals and career pathway by continuing to build meaningful relationships with clients, co-workers, and people I meet in life, and I’ve learned from the experience the importance of people in my work environment. In the future, I hope to continue working with people and providing support, while working in collaborative environments.