2012 in Res Life

2012.  The year of positivity. 

Some of you may read my personal blog.  Some of you may not.   So I will slightly repeat myself in this blog post.  In my other blog, I decided to start fresh for 2012 and start blogging again.  I have decided to do the same in this blog about residential life.  The theme behind my personal blog is positivity.  And positivity is also my New Year's resolution. 

With that theme, I am doing a lot of goal setting and I wanted to blog about it.  I always seem to write down goals and then lose that piece of paper.  Or I will forget to look back on those goals.  I thought that including my goals in my blog would allow me to easily look back and reflect on my goals. 

As a new professional within Residential Life at my university, my time has been taken up by many things.  This includes adjusting to this new institution, supervising and hold students accountable, and getting used to the professional life.  Without thinking about it, I formed a few relationships with others outside of my department.  However, now that I reflect on last semester, I feel that I could have done better in the relationship building department!

So far I have had the pleasure to connect with others in our New Student Services office, our police department and our University College.  For 2012, I want to expand these relationships and create a stronger bond while also reaching out to other departments and offices.  Here is a list of my goals for relationship building:

• Connect with New Student Services more this semester.  I will be working with them this summer (Orientation is housed in my building all summer), and want to solidify that relationship before we get to caught up.
• Connect with more officers in our police department and reach out to those that could be resources for myself and students.  Coming from a Criminal Justice background in undergrad, I feel that I have always loved connecting with the police at every institution.
• Build a better relationship with University College and those that I will work with.  Currently, I only talk to University College when I have questions or need to give information about the students in one of my LLCs.  I want to make sure to reach out more to this campus partner!
• Connect with the Women's Center this semester.  I wish that I was able to build a relationship last semester, but I never had the chance.  I am intrigued with our Women's Center and want to learn more about it and those that work in the center.
• Establish a relationship with Counseling services.  I was so used to working so closely with counseling at my previous institution (for graduate school), and forgot to build a relationship here.
• Connect with our Office of Student Rights and Responsibilities.  I have heard that one of the deans is great and student conduct is a passion of mine (not to mention career goal!).

While setting goals for campus partner relationships, I also started to brainstorm more goals for my professional life.  So here are just a few that relate to my professional position and my professional path:

• Update my resume before the end of February to reflect everything I have done since my job search.
• Research the current job descriptions and requirements for positions I would want in my next job or the job after.  This way I can mold myself to be a better candidate and feel more competent in the positions to come. 
• Better prepare my ACD (grad student) for a possible career in Student Affairs (he is thinking about it!) and provide him with more experience.
• Hold programs that I run (and not the RAs) for my buildings so residents get to know me better and feel more comfortable with me as a Community Director.
• Voice my ideas more.  This can be in committees, with my supervisor, in our divison, etc.
• Become a mentor to some students.  I have yet to have an official mentorship here at this school.
• Get involved with the LGBT students here on campus and learn about this environment more.
• Read at least ONE book related to student affairs this semester.
• Research and hopefully become an instructor for Safe Zone Allys.
• Get involved with the diversity/multiculturism committee on campus.
• Blog about residence life more!

Hoping I can conquer these goals in 2012 (and conquer a lot this semester too!).  One step at a time, I will become a better professional. 

Bucket List for SC

So..... soon it will be time to leave Columbia, SC. (I know I am kind of jumping ahead...but time really does fly by!)

I wanted to post my Bucket List for SC and see if anyone has any suggestions to add to it! This is a bucket list that Ashley (my girlfriend) and I have created and will be doing together:

1. Visit Atlanta
2. Wine tasting in North Carolina
3. Visit the Columbia Museum of Art
4. Paint pottery (at Mad Platter)
5. Go hiking at a different park
6. Roper Mountain Butterfly Garden in Greenville
7. Shooting range

Any more suggestions for us? :-)

COMPs, Job Search, and Motivation!

Hey everyone!

I am so disappointed in myself for not posting a blog in FOR-EV-ER! I feel so busy lately, but that is no excuse.

So I have a tough balancing act going on right now and I guarantee a lot of my peers are feeling the same way! Right now I am trying to get started on all of my job search stuff. And then I am trying to get all my schoolwork together to study for my Comprehensive Exam. Crazy balancing act! I feel like I am behind in both things.

I am glad to have such a great COMPs group though. We just need to finish our study guides and start doing lots of studying! I think we are in a great place though and I will find the time to study in between school and work.

The job search is quite exciting so far and I really can't wait to start really applying and getting interviews. I am struggling on where I want to apply though. I am interested in positions all over the country... but do I really want to go to the other side of the country? Can I be THAT far from family? I think I could, but it still scares me. There are quite a few positions though that I am getting excited to apply for! I hope this job search process will continue to be exciting and keep me motivated.

I really cannot wait until Feb 18th has come and gone though - then I can focus solely on the job search. :-)

So now........ I am looking for some suggestions on how to balance these tough tasks! And how to stay motivated! I really need to find ways to focus on this stuff after a long and stressful day of school/work. And I also really need to find ways to de-stress while staying productive! Thoughts??

:-)

Now let's see if I can keep this up with posting new blogs!

Assessment & Central Campus Pride

Is it weird that assessment gets me excited? I don't think so!

As a Residence Hall Director, I feel that everything I should be doing should be for the students! Therefore, in order to put on some programs that are for the students, I feel the need to ask them what they want.

I just got done creating a survey for all of the residents in our Central Campus area in Housing. This survey is going to assess what THEY want for programming in a week that myself and other committee members have titled Central Campus Pride Week.

At the University of South Carolina, Central Campus is well-known within the Residence Life community. We try to live up to a standard and be the best we can be. Everyone within our department is aware of this. Recently, the other areas of campus have focused on pride within their area too.

As building supervisors, we have reached to our Resident Mentor staff to be just as proud of where they work. The RMs understand Central Campus and are proud to be a staff member of Central Campus. So now our next step was to reach out to our residents. They had NO idea of the pride that the RM, grad, and professional staff members have created. Therefore, we wanted to showcase this to them. In order to do so, we wanted to plan an entire week of events to build the bonds of a strong community and create a sense of pride. When we first thought of this idea, we immediately went to our Hall Governments to get them involved. We were shot down by some and supported by others. So we needed to take another approach to have them be engaged in this concept.

Therefore, we asked the RM staff and the Hall Government exec boards to come up with ideas for programs for this Central Campus Pride Week. I created a survey out of these ideas by grouping different ideas together as options for competitions, large events, etc. I am now going to send this survey to the residents of Central Campus - which is a lot - via email and we will also be setting up stations in the residence halls for us to survey the students this way too. I hope this combination of methods will create a lot of feedback.

I think that using assessment is going to create a lot of buy-in and involvement with this week of events. I am excited to be able to plan events that the residents will want. I think everyone can take this into consideration when thinking of what to give to students!

I know of other building supervisors here at USC that have polled their residence halls for Hall Government events or Living Learning Community events.

I am grateful that assessment is being used in University Housing! :-)

U101 & Our State House Tour

Today has been a good day. It isn't my usual Thursday though - which makes me a little sad. But it was still a good day. Usually my Thursdays are packed with 6 one-on-ones, U101 class, and some student judicial hearings. Today I only had 3 one-on-ones and my U101 class. But I still enjoyed every minute of it, especially class!

For U101, we went to the South Carolina State House for a tour. We met up in our classroom, walked down the street on this beautiful day, and had a 30 minute tour. I thought this was really great and a wonderful experience for my class. The first-years in this class are split - half are out-of-state and the other half are in-state. But those that are in-state are not really from around Columbia. Many were in awe of the beauty of the State House and they learned some interesting facts! I really loved that the tour guide asked around of what states they were from and then was able to connect some of them to the history of the State House or its surroundings.

After class, I spoke with my College Teaching professor. We have bi-weekly phone chats that last about 10 minutes on the ups and downs of teaching a college course (specifically U101). During my discussion I boasted about our class today and the opportunity we gave them. She then asked me a great question - how does that tie into your learning outcomes? I thought it was great that she asked this because it got me thinking of why this had been such a great idea. I tied it into our diversity aspect since the student are all from different places. I said that they were learning about the history of SC, Columbia, and USC, and I said that this was important to get to know information about the place they will now start to call home! This history is probably different than the history of their home-state and the history explained from a SC stand point is different than that they may hear if they are from a different part of the country.

I wanted to share this experience so that anyone could create this experience for their U101 class too!

But this isn't how it was last year....

Have you ever heard the phrase "but this isn't how it was last year..." or something similar? I have decided to tag this as one of my pet peeves. Nothing is ever the same. Everything changes. The slightest change can throw everything off and create a different dynamic. I don't get why people do not see this.... is it just me?

So why do people use this phrase? I see it a lot with Residence Life. I see with with Resident Mentors complaining about the way things are done, either by me or by the department and the changes it has made. And I see it with professional and graduate staff members comparing their area teams to what it was last year. Or sometimes even bringing what they did in a different building and saying it has to be done "this way" because it was last year.

I guess to try and get around this pet peeve, I really want to understand why some people are so quick to compare and to relate back. Is it because it was normal to them? Is it because they are scared of change? Is it because they had expectations based off their assumptions of the previous year? I think all of these could definitely be reasoning behind it! So maybe I just need to ask them why they are so caught up in last year.

Any suggestions with this?

Recognition

How do you like to be recognized? How do you recognize those around you for the excellent work they do? How often do you get to tell them "Thank you" or give them a little note of appreciation?

Recognition is always something that I have felt is REALLY important! However, I find myself not doing it as much as I would like to. Today I have decided to take that time out of my day to recognize those that I have appreciated lately.

The first set of people would be my Resident Mentor staff. As we have had some ups and downs with staff and I have had some difficult conversations lately with some of them, I also appreciate every single one of them. Each member of my 10 RM staff brings something different to the table and each member is an essential piece of the puzzle. I used "you are an essential piece of the McBryde puzzle" during training/opening weekend to demonstrate that I look to each of them as being a piece of our team. But I haven't touched on that concept since then! I have RMs showing support for Hall Government meetings, RMs showing such strong passion for their job, RMs showing such concern for residents and helping them get more support, RMs handling difficult situations, and RMs brainstorming over and over again the new ways to reach out to their communities. This doesn't even begin to skim on what my staff has shown me so far this semester! So right now I am writing them some notes to give out during staff meetings. I am pulling together some things that I have seen in the past week from each of them and individually thanking them for that hard work! I really hope they see that I care! :-)

The second set of people I need to thank are those around me during the work day. My supervisor is wonderful and is always there to lean on. However, she is great at putting the issue back onto us and working through the problem with us so we can guide ourselves to a decision. I learned so much from her last year and learned to be so independent. And the appreciation for her methods continues this year. I struggle to see that some people on our team do not understand this type of supervision and how beneficial it is, and I try to showcase this to them. So I just wanted to personally thank my supervisor for how she has helped me and the hardwork I see her put in with everyone! I also need to thank our Administrative Assistant. She is always dealing with phone calls, questions, emails, etc. from all of us in the area and she does an excellent job on staying on top of things. I wouldn't be able to do some things if it were not for her! The rest of the team - professional staff and grad staff - have been such a strong support and we all get to work together in some way, and I wanted to thank them individually for what I see them bring to our team and what I see them support me for!

And then where has the time gone? There are so many more people to thank and to recognize. A simple "thank you" will have to do for now... but I need to be consistent with other methods of recognition/appreciation and make that time. Because at the day, I know that it feels good to get a little note, little sign, or to just hear the words of thank you.