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January 6-January 12, 2008
January 6 , 2008
There are times when I'm talking to Teri, and something just feels wrong. It'll happen suddenly a lot of times—we'll be chatting along, and then she'll stop. I'll ask her a question, and she'll give me a one word response. Sometimes it's not even a word, but just some monosyllabic sound. I'll say something to get a reaction, and if she does open up, it's not like things are getting better. Usually, she's just getting madder.
“What's wrong?” I ask over the phone.
“Nothing.”
“Come on, I know something's up. Is it about me taking the RA job?”
Teri sighs. “It's not that you took the job. It's that you didn't talk to me about it. I mean, one day you're telling me you got this job offer. And the next day, it's not like it's even a question anymore. Your mind's made up, and your whole life's going to change—and you didn't even ask me.”
“So I should have asked for your permission before I took the job?” I ask.
“It's not about asking for permission,” she says. “It's about considering someone other than yourself.”
“And how is this going to affect you?” I ask, leaning back in my chair. “I'm the one who has to start playing joe-role-model, and doing rounds, and running programs and all that.”
“And I'm the one who's going to have wait for you to be done with all of that to hang out. And who's going to have to be the RA's girlfriend anytime I visit you.”
“What's wrong with that?”
Teri sighs again. The wind rushes by my window, making a whistling sound. “I'm sorry. I don't mean to ruin this for you or anything.” She clicks her tongue. “I just wish you'd talked to me more about it before you took the job.”
“Yeah, I guess you're right.”
“It's OK, though,” she says. “It'll be fine. And you're going to be a great RA.”
“You really think so?”
“Eh, you won't suck too bad.”
“That's my girl.”January 7, 2008
“I'm still not sure I understand why you need to head back to school tomorrow, when class doesn't start for another week,” Dad says, dumping some salt on his baked potato, as he sits opposite me at the dinner table.
“Well, most RAs go through a week and a half of training in the fall before the year starts,” I say, cutting into my chicken filet. “So really I'm getting a shortened version.”
“What are they going to teach you about for a week?”
“I don't really know. I mean, there's a lot of emergency protocol and stuff—like what you do if someone gets sick, or starts a fight or something.”
“I wonder if they'd teach you how to respond if someone had a gun.”
“Yeah,” I say, chewing, “I'm sure there's something about that.”
“You know, during that mess at Virginia Tech, it was an RA who was one of the first ones shot.”
“I'm not expecting for something like that to happen at Taylor , Dad.”
Dad peers down into his wine glass, watching it swirl in his hand. “It probably won't happen. But who expects those things? Or a bomber in the administrative building? Or a hired thug to jump you when you're walking home at night?”
I nod. “I see your point.”
“I just worry sometimes, Preston .” He pauses, taking a sip. “You'll be all right, though. You've proven you can take care of yourself.”
I shovel a forkful of baked potato into my mouth. I'm a little sad to be leaving my father so soon, less than a week into the new year. It's reassuring to know he won't be alone for long, though. “So refresh my memory,” I say, wiping my mouth off with a napkin, “when's Mom going to be back?”January 8, 2008
I pull into the lot behind McCarthy Hall, taking the blue bomber at a painfully slow pace on the ice of the back parking lot. The way I can feel the wheels slide, I doubt they've salted this pavement since before Winter Break. It doesn't help that I've got the car packed to the brim, and can't see anywhere but straight ahead.
I didn't have to pack so much in one load. After all, I was only transporting my stuff about a block, from Smith Hall here. Nonetheless, I was anxious to get the job done, to get my new room settled.
“ Preston Burns?”
I spin and almost slip on the ice. A man in a glasses and a long, sweeping black coat is coming toward me, followed by a few guys and girls, closer to my age. “Uh yeah, that's me.” I say.
He reaches out his hand. “Kermit Farrington. I'm the residence director. And this is Gary, Jonah, Karen, Eva and Bryant,” he says, in rapid succession, as I shake hands without any clue who is who. “These are the RAs you'll be working with.”
“Well it's great to meet you all,” I say, shaking hands one by one. “I'm sorry if I'm late—they told me to be here by noon .” I look at my watch to verify it's only 11:30 in the morning.
“You're fine on time,” Kermit says. “I had the team come back early to be sure we could greet you.”
“Well, that's nice,” I say, sticking my hands in my pocket, feeling a little awkward. “And, like I said, it's great to meet everyone. I actually have a lot of stuff to get moved in here, though—”
“Well that's what I meant by greet you. We're going to get you moved in, stat.”
“Really?” I look at the car, filled to the point where I half expect the contents to come spilling out when I open a door.
“Absolutely,” he says, then motions to others, as he steps toward the car. “Let's get moving.”January 9, 2008
“So Kermit—he's pretty intense, huh?” I ask, rounding out a circle with my scissors, cutting out the shape of a clock from brown construction paper.
“He's committed to the job,” Jonah says. He's a small guy—thin and short, with short, dark hair. “He's really smart, though. Lives the res life thing, you know?”
“Isn't that a little much, though?” I say, tracing our clock pattern over the next sheet of paper. “I mean, who can really live res life, 24/7?”
“It's not so hard,” Gary says, sitting cross-legged on the ground. “You just forego the whole family, friends, personal life thing. You know, make your life your job and your job your life.”
“Well that's fine for him, I guess,” I say, making the first cut into the sheet of construction paper. “As long he's not going to expect it from me.”
I set down the clock shape, finishing my second stack of ten. The three of us are hanging out in Jonah's room, working on door decorations for the building residents. We're going with an Alice in Wonderland theme, which is kind of odd, but the staff seemed sold on it from the semester before.
Jonah's room is kind of off beat. His walls are lined with posters of literary figures—Shakespeare, Dickens, Austin, Fitzgerald—people it hadn't occurred to me would have posters of them.
“He's not going to expect that from me, right?” I ask.
“Not exactly,” Jonah says. “I mean he doesn't mind if we're not spending every waking hour checking in on residents or making bulletin boards. He understands we have class and all, and personal lives.”
“But if you're thinking about knocking back a few beers on the weekend—don't,” Gary says. “Unless you want to end up like your predecessor.”
I look up, making eye contact with Jonah.
He shrugs. “Job opened for a reason.”January 10, 2008
“So what do you want to get out of college?” Kermit asks. He sits behind his desk, feet up on it, hand behind his head as though he's perfectly at ease.
Maybe he is perfectly at ease, in his element as he facilitates this conversation with me. A conversation was what he called it, coming in. It feels more like an interview, walking the edge of an interrogation.
“I guess the same as everyone. Walk out with the credentials to get a job. Have some fun while I'm here.”
“Unpack that for me.”
I shrug. “Well, you know, you need to go to college these days to get a decent job—it's just sort of assumed now.”
“So all of your friends went to college?”
“Not all. I mean, I have one good buddy of mine who went stayed home and works with had dad in construction.”
“In construction?”
“Yeah. It's not bad. I mean, living at home, he saves a ton of money. And he gets to work outside, stay in good shape and all.”
“So it's not a bad job?” Kermit asks.
“Not bad at all.”
“So you don't really need college to get a decent job then.”
I scratch the top of my head. “I guess, objectively speaking, you don't need the degree. But it depends on the kind of work you want. I mean, personally, I don't see myself working construction.”
“Why's that?”
I look away, past Kermit, out his window, looking at the dorm across the way, a few trees in between. “I guess I'd rather do something with my mind, than something physically oriented. Maybe make more money.”
“What job do you see yourself doing?”
“I'm really not sure.”
Kermit lets one hand drop, scratching at his chest. “Junior year, and you don't have a clue what you want to do?” He puts the hand back up, behind his head. “We'll have to work on that.”January 11, 2008
“All right, gang,” Kermit says, “one area where we've really gotta pick things up from last semester is in diversity programming.”
Gary groans audibly. Eva sort of rolls her eyes.
“ Gary , it sounds like you have some ideas to volunteer,” Kermit goes on.
“It's just that that's the worst FA to program around,” Gary says. “FAs” are “Foundational Areas,” I learned yesterday—the topics Residence Life wants us to program around on a regular basis. Other FAs include building community and providing academic resources. “No one actively wants to talk about diversity—or if they do, it's because they already know everything there is to know about it.”
“But can someone really know all there is to know about diversity?” Kermit asks. “You're saying we have residents who are fully informed on every race, religion, sexual orientation?”
“ Gary 's got a point—that we've exhausted the more marketable areas of diversity,” Eva says, curled up into a surprisingly little ball, all of her long limbs tucked inside an oversized hoodie. “We've had some good discussions around race, and white privilege. We did the Coming Out Day thing in October. Now, I think the only opportunities we're really going to have are if something big happens in the news, to make something topical.”
“What do you think, Preston ?” Kermit asks.
I swallow. “I think it's hard to program around a topic like that when you don't have a receptive audience,” I say, sitting up a little straighter, in my seat in the staff room. It's a nice little space, albeit a bit cluttered with all of the programming supplies the staff has accumulated over the year. “But at the same time, a lot of times people don't actively want to learn what they need to learn the most.”
Kermit nods. “Well said. So, in that light, let's get brainstorming about how we can program around diversity this semester.”January 12, 2008
Teri tears off of a piece of her garlic knot, and in that second her fingers glisten with grease from it. She pops that first piece in her mouth, as we sit by the window, looking out at Main Street from our table at Luigi's. “So they kept you busy in training?” she asks.
“It's weird,” I say, looking toward the counter expectantly. It's pretty dead here tonight, so I'm hoping our pizza will get to us quicker than usual. “You get so caught up in training, and team building, and all of the building prep—it's like you forget about the rest of the world for a week.”
“So that's why I had to call you every night?”
I open my mouth to respond, but a catch a hint of a grin on her lips, and decide she's just joking. There's a little piece of some herb on her lower lip. I reach across the table with a napkin, brushing it off. “SA have anything big coming up?” I change the subject.
“Traditional start of the semester stuff,” Teri says. “Welcome events for new transfers and all. Start of the semester study nights in the Student Center .”
“I always thought those were kind of pointless.”
“They're not pointless,” Teri says. “They're for everyone who didn't do as well as they planned last semester. It encourages people to get off on the right foot, and start the semester working hard on school stuff.”
“Right, I understand the point of it,” I say, “it's just that people don't have that much work to do at the start of the semester, so even if they do want to change for the better, they're just going to show up at the study nights for the free food, then book it to hang out with their friends.”
“Just because people don't have a lot of work to do, doesn't mean they can't work ahead. You've got to give people the benefit of the doubt sometimes.”
I shrug. “Guess there's no harm in giving it a shot.” I look back to the counter just as one of the guys makes his way around it, carrying out our buffalo chicken pizza.