It was the worst of times, it was the best of times

Today started off like normal but quickly went downhill. This was our second day of rain, meaning our second day of indoor-only activities, meaning all of the kids have gone insane. I had "Silent Reading/Board Games" for both activity periods, but it quickly turned into "Horseplay Police/Mob Suppression." The other RAs and I ended up having to call in adult reinforcements to keep the kids under control, they were that nuts. The worst part about smart kids is that "because I say so" or "because it's the rule" won't fly as a reason for doing something, and after two nights of very little sleep it's pretty difficult to come up with a reason to put your lanyard on besides "BECAUSE I WILL WRING YOUR SCRAWNY LITTLE NECK IF YOU DON'T!!"

By dinner time we had a pretty nice recreation of the Stanford Prison Experiment going on. All the RAs were sitting around a table and scheming about the horrible things we had wanted to say to the kids during activities and how we were going to lay down the law during social time and hall meetings tonight. The phrase "I'm going to CIMR his/her ass" was used about fifty times in the whole discussion, which was pretty impressive since we only have half and hour for dinner.

After the kids left for study hall we had to report to an "RA social" to meet the RAs from JHU's pre-college program, which is starting in a few days. We were all pretty annoyed by this since we had wanted to take naps/showers/drugs during our few precious preteen-free hours, not meet a bunch of people who have way more free time than us and we will never interact with again. And when we got there and realized that it wasn't just a mill around and chat event, but an actual sit in a circle, introduce ourselves and play icebreakers event, we were all at the point the kids were during activities today. So as a small act of rebellion we all introduced ourselves as the CTY RA to our right, which among other things resulted in our 6'8" Nigerian RA introducing himself as "Stephanie," our tiny little porcelain doll RA being "Andrew," and me being "Mel." I know this doesn't sound that funny, but in our sleep-deprived and incredibly frustrated state it was pretty much the most amusing thing ever. We were all falling out of our chairs laughing while the pre-college RAs, who just arrived this afternoon and were still bright-eyed and bushy-tailed about being here, just looked really confused. Needless to say, the mingling was not a huge success.

At about 8:20 a big group of us snuck out from the social and went up to one of the girl RA's rooms to play Apples to Apples. We only had half an hour before the the kids got back from study hall and and we were still high off our introduction prank, and I have to say that half hour was the most fun I've had in a long time. We were trying to play as fast as we could since we had limited time, and we were simultaneously screaming and hollering at each other about the judging and falling all over each other laughing. To see us you would have thought we were all incredibly drunk, but really we were just releasing all the stress of another twelve hours of getting attitude from twelve year olds, filling out CIMRs, planning activities and dances and game shows, visiting classes, and yelling about lanyards in one glorious half-hour time period.

I think we're going to get a talking to about our behavior during our residential staff meeting tomorrow, but I am unremorseful. In fact, I'm glad we did what we did, because when my girls got back on hall I was in a great mood and happy to see them instead of scowling and wanting to slap anyone under eighteen. Social time was fun, the hall meeting went great, and lights out went smoothly. Once again, I love my job!

CIMRs today: 3 (including my first two-pager!)
Thought of the day: I might go meet the other RAs later for a little late night Apples to Apples...