EDUC 376 (Honors) – Introduction to Residential Learning

EDUC 376 is a course that I took as part of my employment as a Resident Assistant. This class was taught by Larry Robertson. In this class, we talked about a variety of topics, from working with international students to drug/alcohol use. The purpose of this class was to educate new RAs on topics that were not able to be covered in detail during our fall training. This class was largely discussion based, and we would routinely open up class with a discussion on, as Larry put it, “What’s new in the world of RCL?” I think that this discussion genuinely helped me through the first semester as an RA. Even if I was not super active in that discussion, it was nice to hear that other people were going through similar experiences, and that none of us were going through them alone.

Personally, I enjoyed taking this class. I think it gave me a new perspective on the RA position. With this being my first year as an RA, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into and what scenarios I was going to need to be prepared to handle. In a more literal sense, towards the end of the semester, we talked about how our perception of the RA position changed over the course of the semester, and how we could market our experience as an RA on our resumes. During our discussion, I expressed how this position has been vastly different from what I expected. Coming into the RA position, I was not prepared for how time intensive the job is, and I feel that having made that adjustment, I have become a better RA, and a better person overall because of that struggle.

Linked above is one of the first projects we did in this class. For this project, we were to create a map of our community, and gather demographics about our residents. There were also reflection questions, which I feel were the most valuable aspect of this project. This project put a large emphasis on the community building aspect and gave me an opportunity to get to know my residents better early in the semester. I sent out a survey to my residents to gather the information, and I used this information as I moved through the semester to tailor my interactions with them and to have more meaningful connections with them.