The Hidden Truth of An RA

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The Hidden Truth Of An RA



A Resident Struggling





Me 





My Education





My Jobs and Activities





Flagler Security






The Bosses That Left






The Expectations Set






The Struggle Felt

My Silly Little Thoughts

In media being an RA is portrayed as being a buzz kill party busters or the friendly face welcoming residents home. They don’t tell you about the trauma that comes from being an RA. I went into being an RA wanting to help residents and to make friends. My experience has been so much different than that. From residents burning things for fun to having to deal with medical situations there is so much more that they do not tell you about. The route of my trauma comes from being on duty. Duty is when RA’s do rounds of the building to make sure everything is alright, and people are quiet. We start at 8PM and end at midnight but you can get woken up at any time during the night to any sort of situation. The hardest one I’ve had to deal with was a medical situation. RAs are first responders in campus crisis situations. You’re expected to save lives and while our contracts say we’re not supposed, we would still put our lives on the line to protect our residents. Residents will ask you what is going on and expect you to have answers to everything. 

 

This brings me to my next thing which is being perceived by residents. While you might not know all of the residents on your floor or on campus, they know you. They talk about you and gossip about you. Some say really nice things but overall, the negative things are what impact you the most. Being called dumb, stupid, and annoying really get to you. Of course, there is also the abandonment issues that my school has faced in residence life. Over the past 3 years the department has lost 3 different professional staff members. People that all had plans to make the department better or just simply gave up. New people setting new expectations and learning new policies it got hard to figure out what was true and what wasn’t. A lack of empathy is what it ultimately felt like.

 

In order to process these feelings, I felt that I needed to express them through art. The end result was a clay and yarn sculpture that features many different elements of the RA role. A person hanging off the edge, my hands tied down and holding up the person, a pencil, a fanny pack, walkie talkie, and 3 yarn rings. The hands are the center of the sculpture holding the person up to symbolize RA’s having to rescue residents figuratively and realistically. However, the hands are being pulled in multiple directions because you are never just an RA, you are a student, and you have extracurriculars or jobs. The walkie talkie is symbolic of college security and how they can call you in the middle of the night for any reason and the three rings are for the professional staff members that have left over the years. The feeling is hard to describe but it has left a lot of the staff burnt out and feeling unappreciated. Additionally, the red yarn is what ties everything together and it is symbolic of expectations. All of the pieces all have different expectations and expect you to go above and beyond them. 



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