My life as an RA

I guess the sharp pains in my back began last March when I found out that I was rehired to be an RA for my senior year. I would have to say that I had mixed emotions about accepting the job for the second year in a row. It felt good to know that my peers •respected me and that I did a good job, which prompted the heads of Residents Life to rehire me. What bothered me the most was that last year was terrible due to all of the rule changes that we had - to enforce and the way that our opinion never counted. The deciding factor was the free room and board, which is tempting to an impoverished kid from Philly. So I took the job, and that's when my back started hurting.

The day comes to sign our new contracts, and surprisingly enough there are new amendments made to our contracts as well. The first glaring change in the contracts was, "you have to start duty at 6 p.m. instead of 8 p.m." When we , asked why that change was put into our contracts, we were told by our bosses that it was because they wanted us to be seen by students earlier in the day. They wanted us

"taken into consideration." This can also be interpreted as "leave me alone." This is a term that you hear coming from that office a lot. After reluctantly signing my RA job contract, I continued on to finish the rest of my school year and I had a great summer.

August rolls around and the back pains start up again. My mom tells me to see a doctor but I figure that .the pain will just go away. RA training starts in the middle of the month and I'm pretty excited. I'm glad to see the people from the returning staff and even happier that it's the start of my senior year. The training starts and runs about seven hours per day. After the "training", it is time for the staff meetings that could last from 30 minutes to 2 hours! and you still have to find the time to decorate the rooms on your floor and do the room check reports. These things you have to do on your time. We asked if we could miss a couple of meetings or a training session so that we can have more time to do paperwork and decorations and we were told that our request would be "taken int-0consideration."