Residence Life Retreat 2010

The Penn State Residence Life Retreat was at Penn State Beaver this year, right outside Pittsburgh.

Every Assistant Coordinator, Coordinator, Associate Director and Assistant Director of Residence Life at Penn State’s 20 campuses attends.

It was awesome. I got to reunite with my ‘class’ of new coordinators and meet others that I hadn’t had the opportunity to before. Our department went, except Bekah who was out of town. Meredith and I were roommates. It reminded me so much of student leadership conferences. Good times.

Here is my team, minus Bekah.

Kelly (my supervisor) and Jess in the back. Meeghan, Meredith and me in the front.

Let’s just say everyone knows when Behrend walks in the room.  We were the only staff dressed alike – per Meredith’s request. We definitely have the reputation of being the ridiculous group. I fit in so well :)

Me at a Steelers Party

This is what I have to wear to blend in at a Steelers Party.

No complaints here :)

This is Meredith by the way – the first one at the hospital after my accident.

And yes, we are wearing leggings and jerseys. It was Halloween, and I was on duty, so this is as costumey as we could get, haha.

The past week

What a crazy week.

This week was the last week of our United Way fundraising. The winning building receives a voucher for custom tshirts for the building, and an extra $300 in programming money. That’s a big deal when $300 is a semester hall council budget.

The beginning of the week – not so bad. From Thursday on was a hard hill to climb.

Thursday was a stressful day. Lots going on. Senat held Pie your RA/Hall Council Member/Coordinator as well as the end of Penny Wars.

The program itself was fun! And we raised over $100! We took a lot of pies….

Oh and whip cream pie was $1, but for 50 cents more you could add toppings. We had chocolate syrup and sprinkles. My pies started at $2. All of my pies had all three ingredients. Yipee for United Way! Not so good for my hair, haha.

So after this program, Meredith calls me to vent. Earlier in the day I had taken her to drop her car off at the mechanic, thus leaving her with no car. Well, she promised a resident she would go to the hospital with her, so the resident didn’t have to go alone. This is actually policy here – anytime a resident goes to the hospital, a coordinator goes too. So this was not an unusual promise.

She called because she forgot that she didn’t have a car. I was still trying to brush sprinkles out of my hair, but agreed to take her to the hospital to see her resident. Meredith seemed to need a friend.

Well, we had to call Bekah, the coordinator on duty, because that is also our protocol. So the three of us went to the hospital til close to 2 a.m.

We bonded. We were delirious, but still realized that Bekah was the only one that needed to actually be there. We all stayed anyway.

Started Friday with 3 hours of sleep. Didn’t get anything accomplished because my brain stopped working. I did room inspections with Housing (like Towson’s health and safety inspections, but we do them while residents are still here) then took Meredith back to get her car.

Then the night of duty hell began. I responded to calls until 5 am. Slept til noonish on Saturday. Went to follow up with each incident, then went to church with Bek and Mere.

Then, game night! SO MUCH FUN. Bekah and I proclaimed ourselves “eternal game-night partners”. We might have lost the game, but we ROCKED.

Sunday was laundry and cleaning, mixed with accompanying another resident to the hospital.

Sunday night Bek and Eric had a Steelers Party. Details posted tomorrow!