What Role Does Your RA Play?

Your parents—fortunately—won’t be with you while you live in your dorm. This doesn’t mean that they won’t be calling or emailing on the top of the hour every hour just to, you know, see how you’re doing. But while you’re dorming, there will be limited parental supervision. Sound like a relief? Perhaps. But don’t get too carried away.

While your college wants you to feel like an adult, it knows that students can get just a little crazy during that first year at school. Your school also wants you to succeed and to be safe while living in its residence halls. To ensure this, you can count on someone to be there to supervise your floor and to provide dorm-life guidance. No, it won’t be a teacher; it’ll be a fellow student: get ready to meet your RA.

Your RA, or resident adviser, is there to keep dorm life in check and to help you adjust to living in a brand-new environment. That’s a basic job description, however you’ll quickly find some students hold a different view. The “us versus them” mentality can quickly crop up, placing fun-loving students against the stern, fun-less RAs. How strict or not your RA is, though, more so reflects how much he or she cares about your well-being.

Your RA wants everyone on your floor to be, first and foremost, safe. No, your resident advisor probably won’t try prying into your Friday-night activity plans in attempt to join the party. Rather, he just wants to know what’s up so that he can know if any unsafe or otherwise negative situations might arise. No matter your chosen weekend activity, things can get carried away, and it’s your RA’s job to make sure you and your floormates are safe.

Safety comes first, but it’s also an RA’s duty to try to ensure you’re enjoying dorm life. Sure, dorm living can be a bit over-the-top as far as communal living; it’s a lot of students all jammed into one building! It takes some effort to make friends and get to know your floormates, yet it’s often the students who don’t try to socialize who end up with dorm-life blues. While they’ll be a bit corny at times, you can count on your RA coming up with a host of activities designed to help everyone get to know each other better. You might very well make lifelong friends with some of your dorm mates—or even with your RA!

As anyone who faces balancing having to enforce rules with being a friend, RAs have a tough job. You don’t have to become best friends with your RA, but as a student in a residence hall, you’ll be the one to decide whether your RA faces an easy or difficult task. Just know, you can have plenty of fun and fully enjoy dorm life while staying on your RA’s good side; and you definitely don’t want to get kicked out from your dorm! How, then, would you enjoy all that cool dorm stuff you bought?