Exhausted is My Eternal State of Being

Yesterday was a long day. I slept in until 8:30AM, but felt as though I hadn't slept at all. Luckily, I was able to sit in the office until 9:30AM before I actually had to facilitate a session.

I walked down to the MLC to set up for TIPardy (TIP Jeopardy) to find out we didn't have a room. Orientation was in the room we had been using. Fine. Plan B: Find another available room.

I located another room and had someone open up the media cabinet for me (after running up and down the steps about six times to do this). It wound up working really well for TIPardy. My staff  broke up into four teams: Stemianndy, Just the TIP (which I only called TIP), Go, and Indecisive. Team Indecisive wound up winning it all. I will probably wind up making them TIPardy pins as their reward. (As mentioned in previous posts, pins are a hot commodity.)

After TIPardy, my staff had a session with our Psychological Counselor. It was very informative and helped the RCs to see how to handle different situations they may encounter with TIPsters. Some of the staff members seemed a little shaky at first, but they soon became more confident in their abilities.

Mississippi Mud Cake
(still not sure how I felt about it)

We broke for lunch and then met up for office training followed by a ResLife breakout session. We went over everything about the RC position and also decided on Committees for the various events throughout the term. The meeting ran pretty smoothly, making me feel better about my ability to lead a staff.

There was a little over an hour break between the breakout session and our Diversity training. I went into the office to get a few things together and then walked back over to the MLC with a few staff members.

The Diversity training started out with the exercise "By My Bootstraps". It was a privilege line activity. (For those of you who do not know what this is here is an explanation:
The facilitator reads off various statements to a line of participants. Each statement has an action of moving forward or moving backward associated with it. If the statement does not apply to you or you chose not to move, you do not have to.) Everyone seemed to be pretty open to participating (from where I was standing). No matter how many times I participate in the activity, I always seem to get emotional. I don't always cry, but many of the statements get me choked up. (This time I did not cry, which is impressive if you know me. I cry all the time.) After the activity was completed, we returned to the room in the MLC to debrief. There were a lot of good conversations happening and a few that pressed some buttons. We set up a safe space though so everyone was able to express their opinions without being attacked. After the debriefing, our APA did a small presentation on the LGBT(PQIA) community. It was a brief introduction on the topic, but it was quite nice to see 1) the APA feel comfortable enough to present this topic and 2) to shed some light on something that we will possibly be seeing with the TIPsters and staff members.

Dinner view

Everyone went to dinner together after this. The OSD, Counselor, and myself decided to debrief a bit without the rest of the staff around so we sat outside. It was a lovely evening to do so.

After dinner, the ResLife Staff met in the Staff Lounge for Behind Closed Doors. (BCDs are situations acted out by RCs that they might run into during the term.) Before jumping right into the BCDs, we had a debriefing about the Diversity training. Again, good conversations were had. It was nice to see my staff bonding and really expressing themselves about different issues they are passionate about. I was a proud RLC.


Once the debriefing was over, we started the BCDs. In the beginning, we had some difficult scenarios, but they lightened up as the training went on. My staff handled many of the situations extremely well with only a few difficulties. My other staff members stepped in to help each other and I was extremely pleased. By the end of BCDs, I could honestly say I feel incredibly confident in my staff's ability to handle situations. Our OSD was also in attendance and gave them a little pep talk at the end. To sum it up: Main Office hired everyone for a reason and we are all going to be great. Also, he said that they have an incredible person leading them (aka me), which made me feel amazing after such a long and heavy day.

Another dinner view

I'm pretty sure I went back to the office again to work on more things, but the nights have blurred together so I could be wrong.

We met in the morning at 9AM for our first staff meeting. The staff picked their duties for the first week and we planned evening activities as well. The meeting went extremely well with very little side conversations. (Go me for keeping everyone mostly on track!) We did have a moment where we all discovered the new snapchat feature to add each other by taking a picture (in snapchat) of the other person's ghost icon. Seeing this written out probably doesn't make sense to most of you, but I know what I mean.


After our meeting, I again returned to the office. Not entirely sure what I did, but I know it was at least slightly important. We went to lunch at some point and then I returned to the office for an afternoon of paperwork and planning.


At 4:30PM, the core admin met to discuss any lingering items and the meetings on move-in day. I get to stand up and talk to the parents about ResLife and a few other things. Even though I know my stuff, I'm still nervous (and I love talking in front of people). At the student meeting, the OSD and I get to be the hard asses and the RCs get to be the fun and lovable bunch. I'm totally fine with this. The kids do not need to love me.


Towards the end of the meeting, I was no longer forming coherent sentences. The exhaustion train had officially arrived and I was derailing fast. Admin could see how badly I needed a nap so we dismissed and I headed back to my room.

I slept through my alarm and woke up at 6AM, over twelve hours later. To say I needed the sleep was clearly an understatement because I fell back asleep and awoke again at 8:30AM.

Since then, I've pretty much been in the office. I felt quite refreshed and even had a cup of coffee that I did not hate as much as I usually do. The coffee did make me super hyper and shaky though so I probably will not be drinking it again for a while...

First and last milkshake

I had my first milkshake at Bolton (and probably my last). A few staff members and I have planned to only eat sweets on Saturdays so we will see how well that works for me. We've also decided to try to do Zumba each night at 9PM. Hopefully we can stick to this plan.

Tonight, I have a meeting with admin to discuss how tomorrow will run. After that, I plan on running to the tattoo shop to get my septum ring taken out since it has been stuck in my nose for a few days, despite me trying to rip it out. (Yes, it is as painful as it sounds.)

Tomorrow, the TIPsters arrive. I am so excited! (Not so excited to wake up before 7AM, though.) It will be a long day, but I know it will be worth it.

Most likely, I will be too tired to post tomorrow, but I will try to post again on Monday!