Sunday, January 28, 2007

The quest continues

On Friday I had my four-hour group RA interview session. I've never been judged for four consecutive hours before, so this was a first. There are sixty(ish) applicants and only 20(ish) spots to be filled so about one in every three people in the room will be selected as an RA. The Office of Residence Life will also hire some alternate RAs in case one of their front-runners drops out of the race or something like that.

The process itself was fun. I got to meat some other people, one of whom went to high school not too far away from me.

We all started out in a large lecture hall and played some icebreaker games and then we were split up into about 6 groups of five or so and we were taken around in our groups to various activities throughout the building.

In our first activity we were broken into two groups and each group had to design a residence hall. My group simply modified the design of the current first year halls by adding a sink in the rooms, more comfortable furniture in the lobby, one large rec room area, key-card entry for after hours, mailboxes students could access themselves, a sign on the front desk to tell students when the mail has come in, an elevator for handicapped students and that sort of thing. All the while we're being observed and evaluated by other RA's.

Next we were given a list of issues that we might encounter as an RA and we had to rank them in the order we would take care of them. We had things like "one of your residents is showing signs of bulimia," "your best friend calls asking for advice," "you need to change the bulletin board," "you have a major exam you need to study for," "there's glass on the bathroom floor," and "your hall director wants to see you." We had to rank them individually and then come to a group consensus. I thought the task was difficult and enlightening all at the same time. It was hard to prioritize things so quickly when in real life things will happen when they want to happen. Your best friend will not necessarily call after you're done with the bulletin board but before you talk to the hall director. But, at the same time it's important to see that an RA might have to deal with most if not all of that type of stuff.

For our last session, we were given a list of fake people with different personalities and we had to put them onto our own RA staff. I really liked that activity because it was cool to think about who would work well together and who would make a good RA and just because somebody is not as enthusiastic as the next person or maybe they have less on-campus activities, doesn't mean that they're not just as qualified. The term "cookie-cutter RA" was tossed around a lot as something to avoid and that particular activity did a good job of showing that.

And now that it's over, all I have to do is wait... in the first week of February I'll get a letter saying a) I'm one of the top choices to be an RA next year b) I'm one of the top choices to be an RA alternate next year or c) thanks, but try again next year. Then, after I'm called back, I'll move on to individual interviews and then I'll take the RA training class which is about every Friday for seven weeks. THEN, after doing well in that class, I'll get the formal invitation to join the RA staff. There's a lot of competition for not a lot of spots, but I think I did fairly well in the group interview and think I'll be called back.

Stay tuned...

Friday, January 26, 2007

How safe are you on campus?

Probably the first question my parents and I considered when looking into colleges was that ever-so-important question of safety. "How safe is the campus?" "How safe is the neighborhood?" "How long does it take security to respond to a distress call?"
They're important questions, to be sure. After all, you don't want to go to school where half the students are mugged on a daily basis, do you? No.

Obviously there are some stupid things that people do and kind of put themselves in danger. Don't go walking all over campus by yourself in the dead of night. Don't go to a party alone. Don't drink so much that you wake up in a stranger's bed. These are all common sense types of things that you're going to hear no matter where you go.

But, as far as Drake itself is concerned, I decided to select a few security reports from the newspaper so you can read about the latest, greatest safety-related happenings on campus. They will be exactly how they appeared in the paper, just so you don't think I'm trying to hide details.

9: 26 Dec 12. “A male adult stated he fell in the 1300 block of 25h Street after leaving a basketball game at the Knapp Center. He declined Fire/Rescue and was given a Band-air for a scrape on his knee”

Dec 20th at 10:50 PM: “A female entered the security office and advised she was feeling ill. Fire/rescue was called. The females stated she was having abdominal pain and had been recently admitted to a hospital for chicken pox. The then dropper her drawers and exposed her business to show the officer where her misery had been. After the office became conscious and responsive of his surroundings as well as his ability to speak he asked her doctor’s name, but she did not know. Fire/rescue arrived and appeared to recognize the individual immediately and asked her where she wanted to go. She advised them and was taken to a local hospital.

Dec 16. Security responded to Jewett Residence Hall based on report that a male student had taken several pills. It was determined the male student hat taken more prescription pills than approved, and he was having a hard time communicating. While checking for pertinent information on the student, a fake driver's license was found and confiscated and will be coordinated with the Iowa Department of Transportation. The underage for drinking student admitted to have been drinking as well. Fire/Rescue was called and the student was transported to a local hospital.

Dec. 14. A female staff member reported her sunglasses were stolen from her vehicle between 4 and 4:30p.m. On Dec. 14 when the vehicle was parked in a Drake University parking lot located in the 2700 block of University Avenue. Two other females also lost property from the vehicle. It is unknown if the door was left unlocked or not, but there was no sign of forced entry to the vehicle. A police report was also filed.

There you go, folks. That's the worst of it. Moral of the story? Lock your car, don't take pills while drinking, and maybe carry a band-aid with you in your wallet incase you fall off the curb.

Sunday, January 21, 2007

A quest

My RA is probably the coolest person on the planet. She's smart and funny and kind and helpful and she leaves us little notes on our doors that make us feel all special and she's basically everything an RA should be. She is so much so that she actually made me want to become an RA myself.

I kind of toyed around with the idea a little and of course, as there is with all things, there were several pros and cons. For example RA's live by themselves. That's a pro and a con. On one hand, it will be nice to have that extra privacy, but on the other I like having a roommate. Pro: I'll get to meet new people (your residents and the other RA's in your hall). Con: I fear I might lose touch with the friends I have now. Pro: I'll get to plan programs and get my residents involved with campus life. Con: My residents might not be even mildly interested in anything I plan for them.

After everything was said and done, I felt that the "pro" list outweighed the "con" list so I decided to pick up an application.

Now, the application had about three or four pages of things to initial saying that you're willing to take on all of these responsibilities as an RA. Admittedly, it was a wee bit daunting to look through, but after reading it all carefully, I felt like there was nothing on that list that I would be unable to handle.

Onward I pressed.

I continued to the essay section that had nine mandatory and one optional question to answer in 250 words or less. After a day or two of thought, I decided to get started on at least one question just to get things going. With finals preparation, finals themselves, and Christmas break, it took me about two months to complete the essays.

But, of course I'm going to think I'm going to make a great RA or else I wouldn't be applying. The Hall Directors needed some outside opinions so I had to procure recommendations from a couple of people from back home and one from my own RA. After some mild difficulty, all of the recommendations were obtained and all I really needed to do was to proof read my essays and turn everything in.

Shortly after turning in what I was positive to be my complete application, I received an e-mail from my hall director telling me that one of my reference forms was missing. I searched through absolutely everything in a dead panic and was still unable to find it.

On the verge of tears, I asked my RA what I should do and as it turns out, she was in a similar situation last year. She told me to e mail the hall director and explain that I had looked through everything and was unable to find the missing form and offer him my reference's contact information so the hall director could contact him with any questions.

The storm passed, and I'm no longer too worried about it, but I'm certainly nowhere near the end of the application process. Each applicant had to sign up for a group interview for four hours. I'm a little nervous because even though my RA discussed more or less what is going to happen, I still don't have a great idea about the whole procedure.

I'm confident (and my RA is, too) I’ll do well after I know what's happening, and meeting new people certainly has never put me off, so wish me luck and I'll keep you posted.

Friday, January 19, 2007

Back in the saddle again...

Unless it was summer vacation, I never really had a month off of school before and it wasn't the easiest thing in the world to come back. I loved being home and back with everybody and Christmas was great and I loved all the snow. But, all good things must come to an end, so here I am back at Drake, ready to kick butt for another semester.

It does kind of feel good to be back, though. Drake life kind of feels like normal life now.

Having new classes is a little scary, though. In high school, most if not all of my classes were yearlong courses so after Christmas break I really didn't have to do too much readjusting. Here, all the classes are only a semester long so there's A LOT of readjusting to do.

I am taking two journalism classes, two English classes and sociology this semester for a grand total of fifteen credits. No one class seems particularly difficult, but since I'm taking them all together, I'm expecting a rather heavy workload this semester. It's ok, though. In a couple of weeks I'll learn how much effort is required for each class.

I feel like a complete slacker for saying that, but you can't really give 100 percent of yourself to EVERY class or you'll be worn out. Over time I will learn which classes require more work and which require less. Until then, however... I'm a wee bit scared.

I suppose the same thing sort of goes for my professors. After only one or two days with them, it's hard to tell if they're going to be the kind of person that you could walk into the room and give them a high-five, or if you're going to want to sit in the back of the room because they spit too much.

My friends and I pretty much had a very good, very well timed routine last semester. Although, I suppose it helped that we were all in the same FYS. We ate lunch together almost everyday at the same time and we knew who was around the dorms at a particular time and we knew when to expect everybody to be home and all of that good stuff.

We don't know any of that now. We have to start all over again. I was the one who had all of the night classes last semester and now I'm the one who's gone for most of the day and my roommate is gone at night. We didn't do the greatest job of eating together this week and I'm still worried about missing J3 Tuesday/Thursday at 8am, which is ridiculous because that class is over.

I'll find a groove, I'm sure... but it's a little scary not having one.

Friday, January 12, 2007

It's good to be .... connected -- and for future reference: cell phones don't float

I've had some pretty bad phone trouble this semester. Yessir.

First, I accidentally dropped my first phone in the toilet. Yep. It fell out of my pocket, and in it went. My heart sunk as I realized what had happened and some sort of raging thought of "you can save it!" ran through my brain as my hand plunged into the porcelain bowl without a moment's hesitation to retrieve my outdated but nonetheless reliable piece of technology.

Alas, it was too late. My trusty phone was dead.

"Oh, crap!" I thought. "What the heck am I supposed to do now?"
"First," I answered myself, "I'll go to the bathroom, which what you're doing here in the first place."

After task number one was completed, I borrowed a friend's cell phone to call my house in a panic... My mom saved the message, just so she can have the sheer joy of watching me listen to it when I'm home. Now that the situation is rectified, I can see the humor in it. I wasn't exactly capable of doing so at the time of said disaster.

Luckily I was a mere three weeks away from earning a cell phone upgrade from Verizon Wireless, so my parents went online and got me a new phone and within a month or so, I was connected yet again to the world I had briefly lost.

You should know, though ... I'm definitely more careful about where my cell phone is when I go to the bathroom.

Another little cell phone mishap occurred when I was packing to come home for Christmas Break.

I was on the phone with my mom at the time and she asks me blatantly "Make sure you have all your cords and your cell phone charger packed."

I laughed to myself because she's always saying that and I don't recall ever leaving anything crucial along those lines behind ever. That was until now...

"Don't worry, I've got it right here," I assured here as I pulled it out of my backpack and twirled it around my fingers.

I will never really know what exactly happened right at that moment. Did I, after messing around with it for a few seconds, put it down on my desk to be forgotten in Des Moines? Did I actually put it back in my backpack, only to lose it at the airport while looking for something else to do? Will I come back to the dorms in a few days and not find the charger for another week before realizing it got mixed up in a pile of things I decided not to bring home? Who knows?

What I do know is that when I needed to charge my cell phone, I realized I was very much without a way to do so. I searched all through my backpack and suitcase and could find nothing that even remotely resembled a cell phone charger.

A week or two later, we ordered another online and another week later it arrived and I immediately plugged my cell phone in to feast on a much-prolonged feast of energy, and once again I was connected to the world.

Cell phones are valuable things -- valuable, but not indestructable. They're not impervious to water and they're not some sort of solar-powered device. They need to be kept dry and charged... hopefully I'll remember that for next time.

I'm no good at math, but I can tell I'm out of the equation






As I'm sure you know by now, I'm from the great state of Colorado which is more or less 500 miles away from Des Moines. I had a few cliques of friends in high school, as I'm sure most people do, and I'm the only one in this particular group of my high school homies who went to college out of state.

Two of them ended up at Colorado State University, many of them from the class of 2005 ended up at the University of Colorado, and one goes to the University of Northern Colorado. Needless to say, they see each other pretty frequently. Sure, it's a bit of a drive to get from Fort Collins to Boulder or Greeley or whatever, but somehow they manage just fine.

I recently had a sleepover with them, and while there were some moments where it seemed like we didn't spend more than a week apart from another and we were able to pick up right about where we left off, there were other times that I felt like a complete and utter outsider.

I'm not blaming them by any means. I mean they very well can't invite me to Boulder for the weekend when I'm all the way in Iowa. I'm not that unreasonable. But still, it saddened me to think that as much as I missed them and they me, I'm not really apart of their lives anymore.

Facebook, by the way, makes it easy to maintain contact despite distances whether it's from Colorado to Iowa or from one dorm room to the next. You know, we message each other and we post pictures of what we did over the weekend (although, none too incriminating). But, it's not really the same as that person-on-person contact that we all took for granted in high school.

I loved being with everybody again, just like it was old times like we had during our fake book club over the summer, but I think I was just kidding myself by thinking that we were back to the way things were. College changes people, and I'm not saying that's a bad thing; I just wish I were there to congratulate the growth and console the wrong turns.

It's hard -- being the only one IN the group who's no longer really WITH the group. They surely would feel the same way if one of them came to visit me at Drake and saw me surrounded by my new college clique. It's just important to remember that just because we're growing up and might not be as involved in each others lives anymore, doesn't mean that we have to grow apart from each other.

It's so important to maintain contact, even if it is through that once a week wall post on facebook, because both parties will feel the pain of the separation, and as important as it is to feel like they think about you and miss you, they need to know that it's not easy for you to be far away from them, either.

Saturday, January 6, 2007

Then and Now

I've spent quite a while ripping my room to shreds looking for this particular paper that I had to write during my sophomore year in high school. It was the first one of the year and it was a pretty informal little one-page deal about who we are and who we want to become and all of that. I'm actually really upset that I can't find it because I know for a fact that I never would have thrown something like that away.

I like to revisit it every now and again and see how much I've changed and all of that fun stuff.

While I cannot offer you verbatim what the essay said, I do remember some of my goals and interests at the time:

Then: I wanted to go to Colorado School of the Mines to study Atmosphere Sciences and Meteorology.
What happened: I obviously attend Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa and I study Magazine Journalism and English.

Then: I was in the marching band and planned on earning a letter all four years of high school and being the drum major my senior year.
What happened: I quit after junior year and joined the yearbook staff instead.

Then: I might have mentioned how much I enjoy photography.
What happened: I'm a paid photographer for the Drake University newspaper, the Times Delphic.

It's cool because sometimes we think we have it all planned out, don't we? My sophomore year, I couldn't have been more confident that I would meet all of those goals and then some. It was a good feeling. I won't lie. I don't know exactly what changed or when it happened, but even now I can't be positive that I'm going to stick with what I'm studying now. I mean plans have already changed. Originally, I was going to double major in Magazine Journalism and Graphic Design... I shied away from the graphic design since I'm more of a computer person and graphic design required a lot of drawing and painting.

Things will change. My interests will change. Where I see myself in ten years will change. And I'm alright with it, just as long as I'm doing something I love to do today.

Thursday, January 4, 2007

Here's to you, 2007

Personally, I'm not entirely sure why New Years' Eve is such a big deal. I mean, all that really happens is that the date changes, right? Nobody really makes a big deal the night of November 30th because in a few short hours it will be December 1st. I don't usually have plans for New Years. Sometimes my parents will stay up, sometimes they don't; and my brother is usually watching the Disney Channel's New Years programming, so I just kind of mess around, watch the ball drop in New York at ten o'clock Colorado time, and then find some other form of entertainment to keep me awake long enough for me to watch the glowing red numbers on my digital clock go from 11:59 to 12:00 and see if I feel any different.

This year, I'm sad to announce, I didn't quite make it to midnight. I spent the last fifteen minutes of 2006 and the first hour of 2007 sleeping. Yep, that's right... my first of millions of memories that will comprise 2007 is a strange image of old friends juggling porcupines -- and telling me what the want from Wendy's... or something like that.

And, naturally with the New Year come those oh-so-hard-to-uphold resolutions. "This year, I'm losing weight." "This year, I'm getting my finances in order and I'll be debt-free by December." "This year, I'll spend more time with my family." "This year, I'll keep a journal -- everyday." "This year, I'll spend less time partying and more time studying."

Yep, they've all been heard before and they've all been broken before, too. But, calling these personal goals "resolutions" is kind of a lot of pressure. Resolution (noun): a formal expression of opinion made; firmness of purpose. Sounds pretty lofty, huh? It's a grandiose word for miniscule changes if you ask me. And that is not to belittle any sort of personal development that may or may not result from said resolutions, because any trifle of change can have a large affect on one's life, to be sure. But the point is that declaring these things in such a formal manner as "resolutions," makes them seem life-and-death important, where they are really things that will make you happy if are accomplished, but not make you miserable if they are not.

Here's another thing that kind of dooms resolutions: the fact that they come on Jan 1st. Well, that's daunting, isn't it? Here you are at day ONE of a new year, telling yourself about all of these changes you want to make, and uphold for another 364 days. That's a lot of days. There's this huge time element to these things that just isn't helpful. If you're one of the few who make it out of February with resolutions still, for the most part, in tact and continue undaunted with your self-improvement plans, don't you start to feel pressure that you won't be as far as you'd like to be by the time the next new year rolls around? And what if you're one of the many who loses interest after Jan. 3rd? Do you just make the same resolution the next year and hope that you have the power to follow through with it?

And why do you need to even make a resolution at all? I think a lot of people feel like they simply HAVE to do declare something that they resolve to do just because that's what you do typically. Is it against the law to stand up at your New Years' Eve party and say, "I do not resolve to do anything at all because I'm quite content with the life that I have"?

Well, here's to you 2007 and my resolution to make no resolutions and take any personal changes as they come.
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