I can't believe it. Two weeks separates me from having an empty building again! By May 13th 90% of my residents will have gone home and the remaining stragglers (athletes, part of graduation ceremonies, live extremely far away, etc) will be gone by 6PM on May 19th! I.Can.Not.Wait.
On May 19th I plan to have a life again. I'm going to restart my Netflix account, go to the gym WHENEVER I WANT TO GO (and not just in the few hours I can fit it in to the very complex duty schedule), start running (okay, I can pretend right?), start reading fun books (no longer will Incident Summaries be my main source of leisurely reading), and doing whatever makes ME happy. I realize that spending an entire summer only focusing on me is extremely selfish (or is it?) but the past 9 months (more or less) has focused around my residents. Everyone says that a career in Student Affairs is a very demanding career because it forces you to give so much of yourself. I say that a year in a Live-In position is even more demanding.
I've developed an unhealthy sense of responsibility for my residence hall. Whenever I miss a call I fear that a resident was in dire need for something and I missed out on an opportunity to impact their life for the better. If I sleep through an early morning "Hey, I'm locked out" text message then I'll feel bad that they needed me and I wasn't there to form a connection with them. If my hall has a high number of people on academic warning then I feel like their lack of studying can be traced (in part) to my failure to create a hall that encourages academic growth. If someone decides to transfer/withdraw I wonder if they would have stayed had I "reached out" to them. Absurd? Yes.
My primary responsibility is to make sure that this residence hall is able to be lived in. I can make referrals to various departments and offices like it is going out of style. I enforce college policies and I happen to live here, so I do my best to make the environment homey. I'm not God, I can't reach everyone at every time, for everything they need. I have to keep reminding myself of that. This summer I plan to re-focus and re-energize and hopefully come back for my last year in residence life (at least at this institution at this level) with a ton more energy and ideas.
Residents have begun asking me "Will you miss me this summer?" Is it mean that in my mind I'm saying "HECCCKKK NO!"? I'll miss knowing that someone else is living in the building that I occupy, and that when I'm bored I can walk around my building and at least find 1 person willing to chat with me for a moment or so. I may miss feeling "needed" but I won't miss having to update my white board 20 times a day, writing up policy violations, having a personal phone call interrupted 3 times because someone needs to borrow my iron, and knowing that even though I'm in the shower I still have to evacuate the building if someone decided to pull the fire alarm for fun.
I'm not a mean RD, I promise. I try to have fun programs at various hours to reach the different populations in my building. I try to offer a listening ear even on my evenings off. I will completely change my day's plan if it means it works out better for a resident that I'm meeting with and I change staff meeting times nearly every week to accommodate my RA's schedule. But my attempts to be the best RD came at a price. I'm burned out and I know it. "If I were a rich man..." I would have turned in a 2 hours notice, packed up a truck, and left this place where I sleep/eat/relax/and work.
I've got to make changes for next year for my own personal sanity. Number 1: Physical exercise every 2 days is a requirement, not just a passing thought. My mood is amazingly better when I've spent 12 minutes on a stair-master. Number 2: I have got to realize that I am naturally an introvert and that there is NOTHING wrong with me doing things by myself so that I can re-charge. Walking around Target can be done while I'm alone, I don't have to go with someone just because I'm trying to be nice. Number 3: Eating pizza from the dining hall every day for lunch just isn't healthy. It makes me feel sluggish for 4 hours and 95% of the time I go take a nap instead of getting some work done. Number 4: I don't have to be THE best in order to be able to sleep at night, I just have to do MY best.
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