Living on campus is an invaluable experience. Granted, it’s not easy bathing in community bathrooms where everyone wakes up in unison to shower every morning, and it’s even tougher living with a roommate who has no idea what hygiene means. However, I would still prefer dorm life over an empty off-campus apartment.
It is even better living on campus as a resident assistant. Oh, it’s one fascinating opportunity to dive into the minds of freshmen who are intoxicatedly hyper all year long and sophomores who are still trying to recover from their freshman-year hangovers. I have been an R.A. for more than a year and love every bit of it. However, if sleep is something you value, forget about applying for this position because you need to be more of an insomniac to be a good R.A. You wake up to the shrills of a catfight echoing from the girls’ bathroom at 2 a.m. or you check the boys’ room for blaring music, the bass of which makes your bed vibrate on the opposite corner of the floor.
Working as an R.A. for Boston University has its upside and downside. The upside is that you interact with a multicultural population, and, in all situations, you always have legal and administrative assistance. There’s free housing and food, but you forget its worth when you have to baby-sit intoxicated kids who leave a trail of regurgitated Domino’s after their weekend adventures.
I am sure you are wondering, ‘How horrifying can 18 year olds get? After all, they are only kids.’ In my opinion, teenagers should not be living on a college campus without the close supervision of their parents. If you have given birth to a child, why should someone else clean their vomit, take care of them when they are sick, boost their morale when they have flunked a paper or worse, handle their issues with bulimia or anorexia? Oh, I forgot to mention that being a shrink and a psychologist is not enough. You also must know how to change bulbs, repair computers that crash due to spilled Coke and, most importantly, have a solution to clogged sinks and drains. Or else? Or else you are looked upon as nothing but additional weight on the blue planet.
The most disturbing situations are when you wake up in the middle of the night because a resident has failed to lie with conviction. I am not encouraging freshmen and sophomores to become liars, but it would be nice if they thought a little before they lied. For instance, we had a damsel in distress at 4:40 a.m. on a Saturday, crying to the guard that she had been mugged and did not know where her BU ID was. The guard was very sympathetic, believed her story and called the R.A. on duty. After I saw her bloodshot eyes, I thought she was genuinely crying and had been mugged. We called the BU Police Department and, by the time they arrived, the damsel’s friend had arrived at the dorm with her bag, saying the damsel had left her bag at her place and she might need it.
Her bloodshot eyes too much drinking. Her crying thought it would help her enter the dorm without a valid ID. Her attempt to lie bombed. Other than a few unsuccessful actresses and some vomit here and there, being an R.A. provides enough anecdotes to keep your children and grandchildren filled with humor, suspense, drama and, above all, the crazy dorm life!
Diya Jagasia is a junior in the College of Communication.