Hayley's Comet

Having a free place to live certainly helps out my situation, but I don’t think people understand that I actually like being an RA.

Yeah the occassional middle-of-the-night calls are rough, so is getting residents to do paperwork that I need them to fill out when I need them to do it. There are other things I don’t like that I can’t really mention here, but I can tell you that residents haven’t always been nice, or excited to have me knocking on their door. People try to break the rules before they even begin. Those who have let me in without as much as a scowl or guilty “I’m hiding something in the freezer” demeanor have made it all worthwhile. I could go to nine difficult rooms and hear a funny story  from the tenth room, and make up for not only the nine prior but also any other thing that may have gone badly during the day.

Maybe it’s the diligent psychology 101 student in me, but I enjoy seeing complex relationships unfold, and doing what I can to make things go smoothly; this of course, not counting my own complex relationships, problems with which I like to avoid instead.

Move-in day is my favorite. Everyone meets for the first time and the manner in which this happens determines the how rest of the quarter will go. Something as simple as holding the elevator for someone or buying a trash can for the apartment can make it, letting the door close behind you or leaving a passive “paws off!” note about personal belongings can break it. Parents act like children and their children act like children, too. It’s easy to tell which parents belong to which resident, no matter what the physical differences are.

I spent this quarter’s move-in day as a direction-giver and elevator operator. I stood near the entrance of my building and greeted parents and their students as they came in. I remember walking through those sliding glass doors myself, after being hastily told that I couldn’t park in that garage and would need to find a spot elsewhere. The building smells the same way as it did when I move in, and that gives me odd deja vu.

I tried to make conversation with everyone while they waited for the elevator. I also ran to unlock the front door because nobody knew that their key wouldn’t unlock it and they would have to come around. I barely remember anyone’s name, but I liked being that friendly face despite the humidity, parking nightmare and troubling, homesick feelings of being in a new place. All of those feelings were thick in the air. I laughed at the people who brought three suitcases just for shoes and wondered how that girl would get along with her roommate, who brought three suitcases just for books. When the elevator broke, I fled the scene and helped parents and students alike find their rooms, especially those who had been walking in circles and kept passing by the stairs. I will talk to anyone who will listen to me, so helping students move in, as well as being a speaker at orientation, felt more like privledges than chores.

I think that having such a rough freshman year of my own makes me want to “fix it” for everyone else. Someone was telling me the other day that my astrological sign, Pisces, means that I need to fix evertyhing. I don’t know if that’s necessarily true, but I do want to help people, and since I hate feeling uncomfortable, I want to lessen the blow for others. I remember what it was like to say goodbye to my parents, how I felt sleeping five feet away from a complete stranger for the first night with my new roommate and how very badly I wanted to give up and go home. Well, look at me now, right?

I’m not sure where I was going with this, and my computer battery is almost out, so I’ll close with a quote from one of my favorite books by Paul Arden, It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be:

“If something is new, you can’t expect to like it right away because you have nothing to compare it with. The effort of coming to terms with things you don’t understand makes them all the more valuable when you do grasp them.”