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What is Residence Life?

At Thompson Rivers University Residence & Conference Centre, there are three key parts to Residence Life which include the Residence Council (RCs), the Resident Advisors (RAs), and Management. Residence Council is a volunteer group made up of students who live in the building. Their main goal is to create a social atmosphere for students to meet each other while also advocating for them. Resident Advisors are a group of students who live in the building, are paid, and recieve approximately three weeks of training. Their main goal is to provide support for residents and fun educational programming. The management group includes the Residence Life Coordinators who manage RCs & RAs as well as the front desk staff.

Residence Council: Vice President

I almost didn't apply for the position of Vice President of the Residence Council. It was the beginning of my first year in Residence and my first year of university ever. When the application process was first brought up in a meeting, I had decided I wanted to be a general member my first year, maybe apply for an executive position in my second year, then if I still liked Residence Life in my third year I would apply to be a Resident Advisor. I believe strongly in the idea that good leaders come from people who know what it's like to be at the bottom of the totem pole and have worked their way up, getting to know each position intimately along the way. However, the more questions I asked about the position and it's responsibilities, the more I realized that I already had a lot of experience with an organization similar to Residence Council from high school.

Looking back now, I am so glad I ended up applying and getting the position. Throughout that year, I met other members and Resident Advisors who I built strong friendships with that have lasted to this day. I learned a valuable lesson about the difference between setting your differences aside to work with people you might not like and recognizing when those people's behaviour is damaging the integrity of the group. Overall, I learned a great deal about teamwork and program planning.

It was the end of September 2012 when the first person I knew suggested I would be a good Resident Advisor (RA) and should apply during the February hiring period. I was completely shocked, especially since the person suggesting the idea was someone I had only met at the beginning of the month. For the next five months, I asked question upon question about the duties and responsibilites of an RA before deciding to apply.

Looking back, there are four things that stand out about my first year as an RA. The first was learning how to balance living in a "fishbowl" enviornment. Being an RA, residents know who you are and often pay attention to what you're doing in the residence even though you might not notice the same about them. Throughout the majority of the year I spent a lot of time at every event in the building and started losing touch with my friends who had moved off campus. There was no balance for me because I chose not to have a social life that needed balancing; my job as an RA was both my work and my social life. However, by the end of the year I figured out how to take more time to be away from the building and take a step back from the politics of residence.

The second is that I found a confidence in myself that I hadn't realized I had. Particularly in the first month as an RA, I frequently asked the experienced RAs on the team questions but as the months went on I started to trust myself more. I realized the questions I asked were more to learn their opinions and perspectives of the job than because I didn't know what to do.

This leads into the third thing that stands out to me because by the end of the year, I had a better grip on what my personal values were. Throughout the year I had conflicted views about what it meant to be a good RA compared to some of the new management. An RA's position often has grey areas and I was put in situations where my choices helped me understand my personal values in such a way that I could easily bring them to mind and explain if put on the spot.

The fourth thing that stood out to me, and surprised me, was how easy it was to slip on an outgoing attitude. I have always considered myself to be an introvert who would rather spend time alone than with a large group of people and I still believe this is true. However, time and time again I found myself going on extra rounds of the building during my shifts just to interact with residents and create a positive rapport with different communities.

Resident Advisor: First Time

Residence Council: President

My year as President of the Residence Council had a lot of internal challenges, starting with how I got the position. I had orginally applied to be re-hired as an RA but was not chosen to be on the 2014-2015 RA Team. When I wasn't re-hired, a lot of the people close to me were advising me to wash my hands of Residence Life. However, as an RA I had always promoted myself as being "Residence Life's biggest fan" so I kept thinking to myself, "What kind of person would that make me if, as soon as I'm no longer being paid, I turned my back on Residence Life?" With this in mind, I decided to apply for the position of President.

Another challange was stepping back from my role as an RA. In the first couple weeks of the year, I found it hard not to offer up suggestions to the new RAs about how to do better. However, as the year went on, I learned to wait to be asked for my opinion. If I wasn't asked, it got easier to just let things go and let the changes happen.

Within my role as President, a unique challenge I didn't expect was learning how to lead by stepping back. Part of my role that year was to teach other members of the group how to program plan, execute the plan, problem solve on the day of the event, and evaluate the result of the program. At the beginning of the year, I often delegated tasks to other members with a detailed description of steps to take then made a point of being present at every event in order to oversee the completion of every step. I was constantly giving ideas based on what I had done in previous years. As the year went on, I started to step back more by listening to the ideas of others first then adding my opinion based on my previous experiences afterward, if needed. I started letting the other members take the lead on different events but still making myself available to answer any questions the member had.

At first, I was very nervous to apply again for the RA position. It would be my second time re-applying and I had been unsuccessful the first time I had applied. It took a few months, from the time my Residence Council manager first suggested re-applying, to convince myself that this time I would be successful. When I was re-hired, I took on a leadership role in the position as a returning RA on the 2015-2016 RA Team. I became a resource for the new RAs on my team.

At the annual training conference Campus Living Centres hosts in Ontario for its 200+ RAs, I decided to present a REStalk. REStalks are similar to TEDtalks but the theme of each presentation is related to being an RA. As a returner, I thought an important conversation to have as a resident advisor is the idea of presence in the RA role. The video on the left is my presentation at the conference and below it are pictures of each slide to follow along as the video is low quality. The talk included slides on: what is presence, why is it important, how to show presence, and how to measure it's success.

I am currently in the middle of my second year as an RA so here is some food for thought while the year passes:

I've been watching the TV show Scandal on Netflix lately and found this quote from the third season easily relatable to my job as an RA, "Everyone is worth saving; even the monsters, even the demons. In the face of darkness, you drag everyone into the light. That is the point." As an RA, you substitute "saving" with support and "monsters/demons" with residents who don't follow the Residence Community Living Standards (RCLS/Rez Handbook). Even if residents are rude to us or don't follow some of the standards we have in Residence, we RAs keep coming around and offering support because that is our job. That is what we signed up for. I, personally, am happy to do that job every day.

**More to come as the year passes.**