It’s good to be home.

So, for senior year, I am going to post once a week focusing on one thing I love about Holy Cross.  (Once a week, that’s right!  Hold me to that!)  This week, that focus is the Office of Residence Life and Housing.

When you spend a year abroad, returning back to campus is an adjustment.  Everyone I meet asks the same obligatory questions:  “Where were you?”  “How was it?”  “Wasn’t it incredible???”  “How do you feel about being back?  I bet Worcester has got nothing on Rome…”  Now, don’t get me wrong, I love those questions.  I loved every second of my year abroad and I can talk about Athens and Rome until the cows come home (seriously, people are sick of hearing about it).  And it’s true, Rome is the most beautiful city in the world and living in Athens was absolutely life-changing… but does that take away from how I see Worcester?  Or how I see Holy Cross?

NOT.  IN.  THE.  LEAST.

Whenever I am asked those questions, and even when I am not asked those questions, I tell everyone how happy I am to be back on campus, how good it feels to be in Worcester again, and how I am SO EXCITED to be back on the Hill I call my home.  I believe my word of the month has been “psyched” – I can’t stop saying it.  I am just really, really PSYCHED to be back!

One of the reasons I am so psyched to be back is because I am also back in ResLife, doing the RA thing.  And, oh, do I love my job.  Though it comes with many unique frustrations and challenges, being an RA allows me to work closely with my peers, to be a resource, and to make connections and build community.  Working in ResLife makes me a part of a large and diverse group of people that are truly a support system.  I learned this very quickly when I worked in Loyola my sophomore year, and I missed it more than I realized when I was abroad.

The Office of Residence Life and Housing is more than just housing selection and policy enforcement.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that is the smallest part of our job.  At Holy Cross, ResLife is about building community, creating friendships, making a residence hall feel like a home, and living as men and women for and with others.  A good RA – I’m not one, but I’m learning – does all that without you even realizing.  Your residence hall, after all, is your home base here on the Hill.  My freshman year, my residence hall felt like home almost immediately, all thanks to the incredible staff.  RAs at Holy Cross do not get that free-room-and-board deal like some other schools, so the office is full of people who really, truly love what they do.

That’s huge.  That makes this place home.  And that’s why I’m psyched to be a part of it!

ResLife is great, but my own staff is the greatest because we do cool things like this.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 8th, 2013 at 7:36 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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