After a week and half here in NYC I think I've adjusted pretty well. On Saturday I moved from my temporary apartment to my permanent space for the summer, which was just 2 buildings over. I like this room better because I'm not directly on the street where the sirens bounce off the buildings. However, my window looks directly at Chipotle now, which is just so cruel. I'm loving the city itself - and my neighborhood is all kinds of awesome.
Ok, work experience update time. I think I've settled more into the supervisory function than I was feeling last week. My goal is just to be as upbeat as possible, and make sure the Student Assistants (SAs) know that I appreciate everything they do. I think I'm also going to be intentional on getting regular feedback from my supervisor once she's back from vacation (In Italy - jealous!) on how I'm interacting with the SAs. That feedback will be invaluable once I begin my Residence Hall Director role this fall. Something very positive is that even in the last week and half, the small amount of interaction I've had with the student workers has excited me so much, and I know going back into Residence Life is absolutely the right path for me.
The biggest thing I'm struggling with, and that may be a struggle over the summer, is balancing my role against the other professional staff in the building and central office. The last time I worked with conferences over the summer I was one of three Conference Managers. We each handled about 8ish different groups over the summer, and did everything from contacting groups before, during, and after their time on campus, assigning student staff to work check ins/outs, assigning rooms, getting linen lists ready, figuring out charges, etc. In my role now, all those responsibilities are spread out amongst multiple people, and a lot of the time it is very ambiguous as to who is doing what. Granted, here we are working with many more and a much more diverse set of conference groups, but it still is definitely an adjustment. However, I do like everyone I'm working with, and everyone seems very friendly here both in the hall and in the central office.
Today I met the other ACUHO-I Intern, Niki, who is the College Student Personnel program at Western Illinois, and she seems very nice! The two of us spent the day getting a tour of the Washington Square Campus and meeting with various professionals in the central office and learning more about their roles on an individual level. Something interest here is that the general department is called Residential Life and Housing Services. This is important here, because those 2 names in the title operate somewhat separately, and from 2003-2008ish were actually separate areas which is completely crazy to me. Housing services deals with the administrative side of the buildings, while Residential Life deals with the community development and education aspects. I understand somewhat the need for a more clearly defined system because they house well over 10,000 students, but the concept of the 2 areas being separated is so weird to me. Once the recession happened and budget cuts loomed the two areas came back together, and from what I've heard it has made everyone a lot happier, especially in the halls because it gave the residents a lot of run-around.
During one of the meetings we were discussing how conduct is handled here, and one of the Assistant Directors talked about how it doesn't take much for them to call parents due to a conduct issue. This was followed up by a statement that was somewhere along the lines of "We take a somewhat liberal approach to FERPA here." All of a sudden thousands of red flags went up in Niki and I's heads and almost exploded. For those who don't know, FERPA is the Family Educational Rights & Privacy Act which protects the private information records of medical, educational, etc records. Everywhere I've been FERPA has been a huge thing to obey, so this statement sent my head spinning. When we were talking and asking questions we learned that there are a lot of different variables that go into how conduct is handled here that other schools don't need to think about. I'll won't explain them here, but if you're interested let me know. That's all I have to say on that issue, just thought it was worth mentioning.
Alright I think that's enough for one post. Stay tuned for more!
PS: I saw Catch Me If You Can: The Musical last weekend and it. was. so. good. Highly recommended!
No comments:
Post a Comment