Applying to be a resident assistant is one of the best and most rewarding decisions that I made in college. Without my experiences in Residence Life, my college experience would not have been as rich as fulfilling. I was a freshmen women’s RA for my first two years as an RA and I always look back fondly over that time. Although there was definitely a lot of struggles and conflicts that occurred in my freshmen modules, that’s really where my heart is. Over my past three years as an RA, I have always been interested in hearing about and learning about the experiences of other freshmen women RAs. From what I have heard from them, everyone has a different experience — some positive and some negative. I think that this is largely due to the fact that the job is multi-faceted. As an RA, you have to juggle many, many different roles, both within the job and in your personal life. RAs are mentors, friends, supervisors, mandated reporters, event planners and paraprofessionals, to name a few. RAs also have other …show more content…
For this project, I will interview four current and previous RAs and gather narrative data regarding their experiences as a freshmen women’s RA. The sample that I have selected is diverse in many ways — age, experience, ethnicity and status as a student at FPU. I hope to find similar themes and ideas between the four storytellers, as well as gain more insight into how RAs feel that they did balancing these many roles. Below is a timeline of the the tasks and steps that I will take over the course of the next semester in order to complete my senior project.
I have also included a few possible interview questions:
What is/was a typical “day in the life” like for you?
Do you think that you did a good job taking care of yourself and your own