Residing and Advising

Dust off that printer. Let’s take it for a ride.

If there's one spy skill we all envy, it's the Sherlock Holmes-like ability to quickly read a situation and come up with a theory that explains it (like the toothpaste stain that reveals your co-worker overslept, or the nervous twitch that shows your friend drank too much).

Lately, I've really enjoyed the speakers we have had for in service. Career services gave some good advice about resumes and interviews and a professor came and talked about advertising. I was able to utilize the career information in my business communications class to draft my resume and I used the advertising advice to make some really great posters. I even had them printed on cardstock and I got some great feedback. Not to mention, there was an average of 14 residents at both of my programs this week!

I love my job as an R.A. I absolutely love it and my residents. The one thing about the job that I dislike is the fact that I can't control when I get to sleep. Take this week for example; it's been ridiculous. Monday night, I had two residents come to my room and wake me up even though I wasn't on duty. The first, was around 1 a.m. It was a resident asking if she could borrow any honey or jam. I guess she didn't realize that I had an 8:00 a.m. class in the morning... even though I have my schedule posted outside of my room. Anyways, I wasn't upset and after a couple of minutes, I fell back asleep. Then at 4 a.m., a resident came to my room to tell me she had killed 5 wasps in the past 24 hours (this is the room with the wasp problem). I'm not sure what she thought I could do at that time, but I followed her back to her room and killed a wasp. What bothered me about this, was the fact that the resident used to be an R.A. This wasn't the first time she has woken me up about this problem either. I empathized with her about the wasp situation and I kept my supervisor posted, but that was all I could do. The fact that she blamed my supervisor and pest control made me not want to help her. However, since this is my job, I handled the situation maturely. By the time I woke up for class at 7 a.m., I was exhausted. I had trouble paying attention in class and had a headache. Now this morning... at 3 a.m. I get a call to work the front desk because the current D.A. was too tired to work it. I wanted to tell her to call an R.A. on duty but then I realized I was on duty. I worked the desk until 4 and tried to fall back asleep afterwards. I'm weird though, it takes me forever to fall asleep and if I wake up, I have trouble falling asleep. When I am tired, my performance in work and school goes down. I have trouble paying attention, I tend to be irritable, and I am more likely to skip a class. This semester I have definitely missed more classes than I ever have before and it's because I'm tired, ridiculously tired. I've become really good at my time management skills but it is the things that are out of my control that keep me up at night. I've definitely learned not to take classes earlier than 9:10. In fact, I've taken everything I've experienced as an R.A this semester and scheduled my classes around that; hopefully I will have more luck in the Spring.

Why does the gross stuff always happen to me?

Anyways, I need to get back to working on a project. -_-