i tape things. a lot.

i've blogged about being an RA before.

i'm about to do it again.

i feel the need to do this because right now they're selecting new RAs for next year, and some of my friends are applying. naturally, that means that this happens.

friend: my interview is next week!
me: that's exciting! did you read the blog i wrote about the RA selection process?
friend: no. i figured i'd talk to you. there's a college blog?
me: oh. well i wore mismatching socks and had a kick-ass funny story. dress up nicely. and yeah, there's a college blog.
friend: oh that's cool. is being an RA hard?
me: um. i tape things a lot.

i speak nothing but the truth, my dear readers. i go through rolls of packing tape like toilet paper. and my suitemates and i tend to go through a lot of toilet paper.

everybody wants to know what it's like being an RA. is it fun? is it scary? do you get lonely living by yourself?

i don't get lonely. but i also pretend that my room is an apartment, and i spend entirely too much time watching the lion king with my stuffed simba. so maybe you'll get lonely, but i'm doin' just fine, thank you very much.

every time somebody asks me what it's like to be an RA, i never know exactly what to say, because it's such a strange experience. sure, it's a lot of work and i think eventually i will lose my finger prints from taping stuff everywhere and pulling out staples, but sometimes it just feels like this giant accumulation of interesting experiences.

it's kind of like this.

LAST WEEK


i planned my hall program according to my evaluation, which said that i needed more community builders. well that's fine with me, trying to do other programs is a giant pain in the butt. so i took a survey from my hall, made a facebook event, made posters, and emailed every single person in my hall about the date and time.

we were going to color, watch a movie, and eat popcorn in the lobby.

ten minutes to hall program. there is no DVD player at the lobby TV, and i have a sign hanging from it that says the lobby is reserved for a hall program tuesday january 31st from eight until nine thirty. i run and grab my DVD player from my room, take out chuck season one, and then my boyfriend spends five minutes hooking it up with his head squashed against the wall. while this is happening, i go upstairs and start to pound on doors shouting, "hall program, come color and eat popcorn!"

not a single resident was home. three residents from another hall came and colored and watched toy story two with me. i colored a really beautiful fish.

LAST NIGHT

last night a few things happened.

1. i went on rounds with my stuffed simba.
2. i made my bulletin board.
3. i popped awkwardly into rob's apartment.
4. i had an interesting conversation with a "friend" i hadn't talked to in nearly a year and a half.

here's how these went.

1. simba accompanied me on my rounds. it was very hard to open doors with the duty binder in one hand and a giant stuffed animal in the other. when some friends watching the superbowl asked what simba was doing, i replied, "he's helping me turn off lights. his dad taught him to be a part of the circle of life."

2. my bulletin board is a cliche bulletin board about love. i have three definitions of love; wikipedia (to cite your sources!), miriam webster (i used that picture from the blog about terrific being a terrific word) and of course, dr. spencer reid.

yes. this is on my bulletin board.

and i am so excited to look at it for the rest of february.

this already has five facebook likes and six tumblr notes.



3. while on rounds in wright hall at ten thirty, i was walking by adam and rob's apartment. they are fellow RAs and bloggers like myself. right when i walked past, i heard steph, another RA on my staff, say my name. i paused outside the door and she said, "look at emily hollenberg's facebook status, it's about how she effectively watched the end of the superbowl on twitter!" (which i did. who needs to watch the actual game when your friends tweet about it every five seconds?) so i knocked on the door, threw it open and yelled, "I HEARD MAHH NAME!" i do not remember if rob screamed or not. but he was right by the door and i'm pretty sure he almost dropped what he was holding. which was a soapy baking pan.

4. still on duty, i was on facebook chat with my stuffed simba after barging in on rob and steph (and probably adam in his bedroom) and i decided that i wanted to troll a quote unquote "friend" from high school. the friendship that i had with him cannot be accurately described, and i'm not too worried that he'll read this at all, so i feel like i can say what i want about him. but what went through my head was "omg i can totally troll kevin right now."

i don't know how to troll. so i just said hi.

after we got through the basics of "how are you" "oh i'm fine i'm not at purdue anymore i work at an oil refinery" "wow that's so neat i'm still in michigan becoming a teacher" it went something like this.

me: i think there's a drunk girl in my stairwell, i'll be back in a minute.
kevin: what? no! let them stay drunk!
me: what?!
kevin: let them be drunk!
me: do you want me to get fired?!
kevin: you gotta be good at not seeing stuff.
me: i think i did that when our frat burned down last week!
kevin: that's some deep shit.


LAST MONTH


last month i got an email asking if i would like to blog for the student life office about the RA selection process. i, of course, jumped up and down, screamed, and was so excited. this was like... professional blogging! it was going to be fantastic! i called my mother and the first thing she says is, "do you get paid?"

um. no. BUT I GOT TO BLOG.

so i blogged about the whole selection process the way that i normally blog. i got an email back saying that my lack of capitalization didn't look that good on an official college website. i had to put in some RA statistics that had to do with my paycheck. then i sent it to them and the hall directors said it was great! they put it on facebook! they put it up on the website!

i went to go read it and they cut out all the parts that i thought were decently funny. (i had to try to make the scary selection process sound fun, right?) but they left in the part about my interesting socks that you could clearly see through my tights when i went to the interview. i think the best line that they kept was "I debated and debated until the last minute, finally decided that having my own RA fill out my reference would be awkward, and hiked up three floors to an RA, who I really only knew through my brother, to ask him to fill it out. He did not judge the bowl of oatmeal in my hand or my fluffy green slippers when I asked him." they cut out the part about my failed drawing looking like a batman mask.

there are two other blogs on this website by "guest RA bloggers", and mine is by far the longest. by about five times.

THE PRESENT WHERE EMILY IS BLOGGING ABOUT BEING AN RA

see, none of this really has anything to do with being an RA. if it did, i would've told you about the times i've called the cops, knocked on people's doors at odd hours of the morning because they were being noisy, and the time that i took down my bulletin board without a staple remover. i still don't feel like my fingernail has sufficiently recovered, and i did that in october.

i will leave you with two videos. one is dr. reid explaining love (and peas) like i have on my bulletin board

the other is shit RAs say. i have said every single one of those things. including "i don't know, i don't know what it smells like."

"i can't, i have duty."

"it's also found in peas!"