We’ve all been through it. We show up to this busy parking garage. Someone directs us to a front desk and tells us to check in. After that, we haul everything we own up many flights of stairs or wait an absurd amount of time for an elevator.
Then we finally get to our new room, only to see two other roommates crammed into a space we have to share for the next nine months. And now you’re thinking, “Maybe I shouldn’t have brought my entire life with me to school.”
Yet that’s the key. If we bring our whole life with us to college, we bring everything ““ the good, the bad, the great, the sadness, the anxiety, the chaos, the eventual sanity.
Even though an eye-opening, three-day orientation is our first stop on this interesting ride, it’s the residence halls ““ not the dorms ““ that stabilize this hectic adventure.
The multiple perspectives, backgrounds, needs, desires and opportunities for learning make on-campus residential life so unique. It really does come down to the reason why UCLA does not have dorms but has residence halls ““ we just don’t sleep in our rooms, we live and create a community in them.
When I moved into the residence halls, I freaked out. I was so nervous, thinking about the thousands of people that lived in such close proximity. It scared me to believe that I was on my own and could not rely on my mom’s home-cooked meals or my dad picking me up from school every afternoon.
This was college, not high school, where all my friends populated the halls. Because of all these anxieties, I felt alone. I may even say depressed. I didn’t feel like being social, and looking back at that, I realize that feeling is normal. At the same time, I realized I wasn’t being true to myself.
Making the decision to get a new outlook on life, to get a new understanding of myself by coming to UCLA, my anti-social tendency closed me off from the interactions that I needed to facilitate my personal growth.
My resident assistant ““ yes, a goofy, peppy, fun-loving RA ““ came by one day and said that I should attend a house government meeting. He explained that it was an opportunity to plan activities for my house while meeting my neighbors.
Two weeks later, I was house government president, planning events with a group of people I would soon call my friends. Above all, I loved the ability to plan events, to create a community full of friends and to revel in a camaraderie that I hadn’t felt in high school.
Three years later, after being a student leader in my building and an RA for two years, I am an assistant resident director. What does that mean exactly? It means I’m responsible for shaping and molding a community vision for a team of 20 wonderfully talented and gifted student staff members whose aims are to create an environment for residents to feel at home by taking advantage of every single event, activity and opportunity that comes their way.
These four years can be quite rough, but I am able to give my staff the opportunity to create a change, to make a safe, comfortable and fun home away from home for everyone searching for one.
Residential life at UCLA is a Bruin tradition because it’s like nothing else. The nature of the residence halls ““ the Hill ““ is opportune for those looking to create a new beginning for themselves right away ““ in their new home.
It’s here where you meet your first friends, where you learn how to live with other people, where UCLA can feel like a smaller place just by talking to your roommate, next-door neighbor or your goofy, peppy, and fun-loving RA.
And the Hill has the same thing in common as it does with other UCLA traditions: opportunity. The Hill gives every Bruin the right to be who they are, to be tolerant and accepting of that ability, and it provides avenues for personal growth.
No matter what Bruin traditions you hold close to your heart, your experiences, challenges and rewards in the residence halls will allow you to explore every bit of what makes us a Bruin ““ our lovely home of UCLA.
Mansure is an assistant resident director in Courtside for the 2007-2008 academic year and a fourth-year theater and education studies student.