Bulletin Boards, Knocks and Talks, Oh My!

by Eddie Sonnie

With great opportunities come great responsibilities. I’m an RA now, and I’m so excited! Since I came in close to the end of the year though, I have a lot to catch up on, but there’s no need to worry because they hired the right one! I am working with first-year students, so right now I’m helping them navigate the housing lottery and preparing them for registration. In order to effectively do this, there are a bunch of different ways we RAs present the information, most notably bulletin boards, knock and talks, and community connections to make sure that everyone is having the best year they can have.

The theme for our upcoming bulletin board is class registration and closing out the year. Our bulletin boards are located strategically on the halls so that residents can see them easily. We try to make the bulletin boards artsy but also informing, so we add a mix of pictures and text to make the boards appealing to the eye. While we are totally prepared to answer questions, we try to make the boards as clear and self-explanatory as possible so that if we aren’t available for some reason, residents can always check out the bulletin boards.

Knock and talks are little chit-chats that we have with residents, where we talk about life and make sure that they are doing OK. I’m excited to go around next week for knock and talks because then I get to get better acquainted with my residents! I’ll be asking them things like what their majors are, where they’re from, what they like to do, and then I need to make sure that they are getting through their first year all right and have a plan for housing next year.

I’ll be writing a blog sometime later about my community connection, but the point of a community connection is to bring the hall together, have fun and also present the information in a more enjoyable way. I plan to have a “Mario Kart” tournament with my hall and in order to participate, they will have to show me their plan for registration, and at the event, we will have food and snacks and we can discuss what the transition to being a sophomore is like. 

Sometimes RAs get bad reps because we have to enforce policy, but we do so much more than that. I’m definitely not excited to have to enforce policy, but I’m super excited to build relationships with my residents and help them navigate the testy waters of their first year!