You Are Not Alone in This

My heart is breaking.
Please, listen to me very, very carefully. Lock these words away in your secret heart, and never, never forget them:

You are beautiful. You are loved. You are talented, and smart, and special.
You are also kind, and sweet. You are courageous and bold.
You are impassioned, and you are important.
You are strong.
You matter. You have impacted the lives around you in ways you will never comprehend,
and you have a very special light- one that is yours, and yours alone.
If you do not spread this light, then no one will, and the world will be the worse for it.

You. Are. Beautiful.
You. Are. Loved.
You. Are. Strong.

And the world is a blessed place because you are here and you are in it.

where have all these days gone??

I have now been residing in Bloomington for one month. Classes are well underway and I've rapidly been reminded that professors are rarely lackadaisical in assigning homework. My workload has been substantially proliferated as of late, and unfortunately I feel I'm falling behind. This weekend I was finally able to get ahead on most of my schoolwork, but I fear I'm losing any resemblance of a lead I may have had in my job. My first program took place last week (Red Mango & Tangled), and while I feel confident in asserting it as a considerable success (with upwards of 80 residents attending), I feel acutely inadequate and uncertain in many other areas. I have a bulletin board due in three days, for which I have yet to select a topic (either campus safety or volunteer opportunities), I've had multiple girls suggest program ideas (which I have written down but have not had time to review extensively), and my Leadership Council has not had its first meeting (although we are tentatively meeting this week), and of course there's still so much I'm unsure of behind the desk and on rounds.
However, I remain hopeful and (mostly) optimistic! This morning while I was walking to class, I heard these lyrics on my iPod:  

I called, You answered, and You came to my rescue.

Well, of course, silly girl. How do I forget so easily the Creator of the universe is holding my hand, that all I need to do is call to Him and He is there? I'm afraid I tend to let other distractions take the place of the One who ought matter most, every day, in every way. I need to discipline myself better, in order to better trust Him and better be a light to those around me. I have been placed in this job for a purpose, and I am convicted that this purpose will serve the Kingdom of God. My life has been profoundly blessed, and when I take the time to remember that (like right now), I feel silly for ever complaining in the first place. I think I need to scold myself more often. 

And here is a cute picture of my new roommate, Holden.  He's quiet, and adorable, but he isn't much help with the housework.

please, please, please

don't leave me all alone.

Three Spins

In the Marching Hundred, we do cool things like chair step.
When marching chair step, we do cool things like three spins.
Three spins turn you 270 degrees to face right from your starting position, but you turn to the left (because turning to the right is not something we do in Hundred. Always turn to the left).
Three spins are tricky. They require a balanced center of gravity, and when you first start learning them, they make you dizzy. They can be confusing at first, too, but then you get used to it and you look fantastic.

In Read Center, we do cool things like Welcome Week.
When it's Welcome Week, it is also band camp.
Being an RA and being in Hundred is best defined as "insanity." Hopefully the good kind of insanity, though. The three-spin kind.
My whole life is like a rookie's three spin right now. I'm a little dizzy and confused, and I'm not really sure what I'm doing. It's going to take a lot of practice and careful balance, but I'll get the hang of it sooner or later.
Lame analogy? Maybe, but it's what I've got. I'm tired.

Champions of the Universe!

So, Read staff are Champions of the Universe. Not merely Champions of Bloomington, or Indiana, or all of planet Earth, or the Milky Way. We are champions of the entire, infinite UNIVERSE, and we have the plaque to prove it. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Our week of formal training has concluded, and I'm surprised how quickly it went by. Although each day seemed to entail several millennia in and of themselves, it's difficult to realize training is over, and Welcome Week is beginning. I feel like I've been here in Read forever, but I also feel like I've only been here for a week and a half (which I have). I am simultaneously ecstatic for and dreading this week. Marching Hundred band camp starts for vets tonight, and while I am so ready to get some Hundred back in my life, it's going to be extremely difficult for me to balance band camp with my job here at Read. I'm expected to be at both places all day, so I'll be doing a lot of bouncing back and forth. Thankfully, the Residence Manager and GSs here are extremely kind and cooperative, and are willing to let me do the necessary bouncing. They have been so understanding and wonderful to me throughout training and with helping me manage my schedule as best I can. My fellow RAs have been equally amazing. Just today, two of them offered to help shepherd my floor to events if I ever feel too overwhelmed to handle it alone.

I am also handling a personal concern over Hundred, one which I'm nervous enough about to have felt nauseated all day, but I have a beautiful support system, and as my mother kindly reminded me, if God leads me to it, He will also lead me through it. As I tend to say, it will all work out.

So, bearing in mind I have the power that created the universe backing me up, bring it on, Welcome Week 2011.

The Journey Begins

Today is Tuesday, August 16th, and my third day of training as a new Resident Assistant in Read. There are 18 RA's and one CUE here. 12 RA's plus the CUE are new, with six RA's returning from last year. We, quite literally, have training all day. We begin at 8am and have been ending sometime around 9pm. The managers and supervisors have been shoving an awful lot of information into our brains over the past few days, and we've barely begun.  It is very exciting and I'm having a lot of fun, but it is a lot to process.
I really like the rest of the staff and we seem to be getting along well, so far. Within the large staff, we have been broken up into three small staffs, consisting of six RA's and one of the GS's (graduate supervisors).  Yesterday during our small staff meeting, we talked about religion for a little while, and I was thrilled to hear that spirituality/faith plays a part in all of my coworkers' lives. I was suddenly and acutely reminded God has orchestrated our staff the way it is for a reason, and I'm excited to see where this year will take me.

So far, we have mostly been listening to many different lectures/speeches and participating in discussions or group activities. For example, yesterday, we listened to a guest lecturer from ISU talk about social class and how it affects students' chances in college and in the future. I don't think I agreed with everything the professor said, but some of it was pretty interesting (albeit long-winded). Earlier today, we learned a little bit about the Incidents teams during a breakout session in which we had to address a mock-up of vandalism. It was more hands-on than some of the other things we've been doing, and I found the conversation really interesting. We're also working on a skit right now to be performed Friday.

Additionally, we received our Collateral assignments today, and I'm very excited to say I'll be working with Read's Adopt-a-Nonprofit, which this year is the BPP! As a theatre major and former Director of Philanthropy in my previous res hall, I'm really looking forward to this assignment. Basically, I'll be working with another RA underneath a GS to help BPP out with whatever they need- advertising, marketing, arranging meetings, and getting our residents involved. Weeeeeeeee!

We also spent a lot of time today talking about programming, and I have tons of ideas. I can't wait to start working on some of them! I definitely want to have a dance party at some point in time. (:

Tonight, we were supposed to go to the pool, but somehow our reservations got messed up, so instead we've had a "free" night since about 6 o'clock. I decided to go to dinner with two friends outside of Read, and the time away from discussions, handouts, procedures, policies, and ice breakers was really valuable. I'm still extremely tired, but I feel more mentally sharp than I did earlier during the day. Tomorrow, however, we're starting bright and early again. I'm hoping to get a lot of work done on my bulletin board, which needs to be up by Saturday at 5pm, along with my door decorations.

I think that's a pretty fair summary for the first three days. The journey begins