Busy, busy, busy

In honor of the first full day of session I thought I'd give a breakdown of just what exactly a CTY RA does all day. To start with, here is the official CTY daily schedule:

7:30-8:30 Breakfast
8:45 Class handoffs to TAs
9-11:45/12:15 Class time (there are two different lunch shifts)
9:15 Residential Staff Meeting (RAs + SRAs + Residential Dean)
11:45-1:15 Lunch
12:40/1:10 Class handoffs to TAs
12:45/1:15-3:00 Class time
3:20 Students meet RAs for activity period 1
3:30-4:30 Activity period 1
4:30-5:30 Activity period 2
5:30-6:30 Dinner
6:45 Class handoff to TAs
7:00-9:00 Class time (study hall)
9-9:45 Social time
9:45 Hall meetings
10:30 Lights Out

In addition, each RA has several shifts of "scheduled presence" throughout the day, typically about 45 minutes during each meal time. This is to make sure no kids are going places they shouldn't, and that kids who are in appropriate places are wearing their lanyards and playing nice. The times and locations of everyone's scheduled presence rotates through each week.

Now here is the schedule of how I actually spent my day:

6:45 Wake up after six hours of sleep

7:00 Pound on doors and drag sleepy preadolescents out of bed

7:30 Drag sleepy preadolescents to breakfast

8:45 Hand off sleepy preadolescents to their TAs

9:15-10:30 Residential staff meeting. This is when we ask any questions we have and find out if there's any important information we need to know. For instance, apparently yesterday some of the male students found a bottle of vodka hidden in their ceiling, so today the maintenance crew will be coming through all the halls and checking for hidden ceiling booze.

10:30-11:45 Meet with the other RAs on the Friday dance committee to start planning the first dance. We decided the theme will be "Tropical Island Getaway" and we'll play lots of reggae and other theme music. We spent a long time filling out all the supply requisition forms and working on the playlist, since it's sort of hard to find songs that young nerds will be comfortable dancing to.

11:45-12:30 Lunch! Mmmm...cafeteria pizza.

12:30-1:15 Scheduled presence on the steps outside the gym (or "auxiliary dining facility," as JHU calls it). This was basically 45 minutes of me yelling at kids to put on their lanyards.

1:30-3:00 Meeting with the rest of the Game Show Marathon committee. We decided we will have 12 groups of 30 kids each rotating through 6 game shows (two stations of each): The Price is Right, Jeopardy, Family Feud (with data from surveys filled out by the RAs), Figure it Out, Whose Line is it Anyway? and Wheel of Fortune. We start prepping the games and assign RAs to various duties. I'm going to be the host of one of the Family Feud stations!

3:00 Girls get back from class. Things are a little confusing at this point because it has started to rain so the outdoor activities won't be possible, but we don't have the rain plan yet.

3:20 Rain plan is posted. Instead of the activities the kids signed up for last night, they can choose from one of about five indoor activities. Instead of Theater Games and Charades, I'm now running Internet Time and Board Games. This thrills me to no end.

3:30-4:30 Run internet time in the computer lab. But from the way the kids were acting, it seems they accidentally listed it as "free and unlimited crack cocaine time." I enact a 15 minute time limit per computer so everyone can have a turn, and instantly become the most hated person in all of existence.

4:30-5:30 Run board games. These kids were pretty tame, so I spent this hour sitting in the hallway watching another RA blow bubbles.

5:30-6:15 Dinner time! In between eating yet more lukewarm pizza, I yell at kids to wear their lanyards. I'm going to make myself a tshirt that says "Lanyard Police."

6:15-7:00 Scheduled presence in the basement of the boys' dorm. This is to make sure no one sneaks into the TV room down there when they should be at dinner. I didn't see one kid the whole time, so I took a nap in the hallway.

7:00-9:00 The kids are at study hall! This is the best part of the whole day! I hang out with a bunch of the other RAs and we have two whole preteen-free hours to do whatever we want! Today that consisted of playing board games and gossipping about our least favorite kids.

9:00 Girls return from study hall and hang out on hall for awhile. I start working on this blog entry, and am intermittently interrupted by girls with mail for me to send tomorrow, requests to fix broken things in their rooms, and stories about their first day. I love hearing the stories, but the rest I could do without...

9:55 Hall meeting. Apparently when I told the girls "hall meeting at 9:45" they interpreted it as "take showers and shave your legs at 9:45," so we ended up starting late. I read them the daily announcements and give them the activities sign up list, and they try to figure out which activities will have cute boys at them.

10:25 I do my lights out dance down the hall (since I still don't really have a song).

10:29 Lots of frantic preadolescents running around with toothbrushes and attempting to simultaneously change into their pajamas.

10:32 Lights out!

10:33 I pass out on the bed.

10:34 I go to the office to turn in my second CIMR and input my girls' activity choices into the computer (after waiting in line for 10 minutes, since there's only one computer).

10:50 Get back on hall, answer emails, finish this entry, and enjoy the first responsibility-free alone time I've had all day!

Starting tomorrow I'll also have scheduled presence during breakfast every day (tomorrow I've got the gym entrance at 7:30, woo!), and also sometimes I have it outside during the 9-9:45 free time. Other jobs I'll sometimes have include water duty (filling up big jugs of water and lugging them outside before activities start so the kids don't dehydrate) and night duty (patrolling the outside of the building at 11:00 to make sure all the light are off, and acting accordingly if any of them aren't). I also have to make two classroom visits a week for each class I have girls in, which is another reason having the last minute addition girl sort of stresses me out: I have to make six classroom visits every week, and they can't be during study hall. Lastly, any time a student does something inappropriate or I see something concerning, I have to fill out a CIMR (Concern/Incident/Medical Report, pronounced "simmer") form and turn it into the office ASAP. Each staff member is supposed to average 2-3 CIMRs a day, today I had two (a girl who sassed me about wearing her lanyard during internet time, and the girls who made the hall meeting late). It was a very hectic day, and from now on I have to find time for class visits too. Aarrrrrgh!

CIMRs Today: 2
Closing Thought: I love my job!