Toy Story Wonderland

    

    As the front door unlocks with the electric buzzing, a resident walks into a Toy Story wonderland. At the welcome desk sits Anna Sears with a smiling friendly face greeting everyone that walks by (Figure 1). The walls and desk are decorated with characters from Toy Story to make Lycoming Hall more welcoming. Each decoration is handmade out of

Figure 1

paper, paint, color pencils, and markers, ranging from characters and clouds being drawn and taped to the walls, to red, blue, and yellow paper monkeys hanging from the ceiling next to the welcome desk. Behind the welcome desk, a big bulletin board hangs on the wall showing who is on-call for the night and a small white-board right next to it with magnets showing who is in the building and who is not. 

    Anna Sears, a young college student wearing thin, long pink pajama pants, a tan, brown drawstring hoodie with the words Bloomsburg University designed on it, clear frame glasses, and a white beach shell necklace, has been a Resident Assistant (RA) for 1 year and is on her 2nd year. The job of an RA is to guide residents towards campus resources, support residents, work at the welcome desk, keep residents safe, make sure the building is clean and nothing hazardous is present, and to create a respectful warm living space. Anna always loved being able to express her creativity and having the freedom to do so, as well as helping other people. "I realized about two summers ago when I worked at the trio upward bound summer academy for the first time and got to see how my impact could change the lives of the kids I was working with," Anna recalled. 

    Anna giggled with just about every response she gave. As she would talk, she made sure to keep paying attention to all the residents walking in and out of the lobby and wishing them a good night or welcoming them back. The first year Anna was an RA, she was placed in Montour Hall. The environment in Montour was different than Lycoming. The staff consisted of only four people and the hall was co-ed. In Lycoming, there is nine people on staff and while the majority of the floor are co-ed, Anna works on an all-girls floor. In Montour, none of the residents participated in the programs that she was required to host but in Lycoming, the residents are highly involved. The residents in Montour were also a mix of different years while in Lycoming, the majority are freshmen. So, no matter how long she works as an RA, she is still learning every day, experiencing new things and helping people in ways she has not helped others before. 

    In addition to Anna Sears, is Alessia Eisloeffel who is a Core RA. The Core RA's job is to do all tasks of a normal RA, but more. She also does the scheduling for the normal RA's, deals with shift switches, and keeps track and inputs data for the programs that the RA's host. In a blue t-shirt, that has half a dandelion on it with the words Bloomsburg University underneath it, black sweatpants, with white crocs that have pink socks poking out the shoes, she walks across the lobby toward the Graduate Hall Directions (GHD) office (figure 2) to help a resident who is locked out of their room. 

figure 2

Alessia scans her ID to unlock the office door, uses her ID to scan the lock box open where she can get a key to open the resident's door (master card). She documents the name and room number of the resident and the time she took out the master card on a paper that is clipped onto a clipboard right next to the lock box. She explains how after 3 times of being locked out, they get an email sent out to them about how to prevent further lock outs and potentially having to talk to higher ups about how they can fix the issue if it keeps occurring. She walks to the elevator with the resident and heads to his room to let him back in. She uses the master card to scan open his door. 

              "Thank you so much!" exclaims the resident. 

               "You're welcome," she responds. 

    Alessia takes the elevator back down to the lobby and walks to the GHD office to return the master card. She writes down on the same paper what time she returned the master card. Rather than going back up the elevator to her room, she scans the door right next to the elevators for the first-floor dorms and walks to a small room with white ceiling panels, and cool toned light panels in the ceiling. The room consists of different colored couches, with brown patterned carpet floors, a black and grey coffee table, black office chairs with beige cushions, and two black tables pushed together to create one. This is known as the first-floor lounge (Figure 3), a place where residents can hangout, study, relax, and etc. Alessia sits down at the table and crosses her legs.

figure 3

"I wanted to be an RA to make residents feel safe and like comfortable in a new space. Growing up in a military house, I moved around a lot, so I didn't really have that safe place. Um but when I came to Bloomsburg, I got to know my RA and she kind of motivated me to apply for the job and I wanted to be that support to the new freshman. And now I'm here, two years in." 

    Alessia chuckled while telling her story. Her chuckling and pauses in the way she converses, strips her from being perceived as a superior. It makes her appear as a friendly face that you can go to whenever you have a problem or need comfort. While Alessia is sitting there with her leg crossed, she explains how she doesn't want to be seen as a higher up and be viewed as having power over people. She wants to be depicted on the same level as others and for it to be known that she is not her job. She is a student too and does not have all the answers but will be there to support residents.