Summer Advising Begins
Tomorrow Summer Advising starts and I'm a little nervous! Fortunately, we start out with transfer students who don't really care about Davis and think they know everything. So that's fine. But I'm still nervous.
The past few days have been really weird. I'm still having a hard time catching up on sleep after finals - the four days in between finals week and SA didn't help, surprisingly. I'm also just having a hard time with the adjustment of not being an RA, and I'm missing my friends a whole lot. With the long days of training and preparation for the advisees, I've been really stressed, tired, and not much fun lately.
As a result, I'm kind of feeling left out and isolated from everyone. I play with Reina and Chelsea, but I get scared that I'll be known as the guy that only talks to RAs. And I'm not even an RA anymore, so I don't want that stigma. I get along great with everyone, but I don't feel very connected to people. As bad as it sounds, I really want to go out and drink and go crazy with some of the 21 year olds here, but they live in Building 1 and I don't see them. And I'm too tired to be doing that anyway (but that didn't stop me in Australia). I'm making friends but I'm afraid that with cliques forming already, I won't get to be a part of any of them.
But really, I think that all my hesitation and weirdness is just the result of my life changing drastically. I miss being an RA, as much as I began to hate it towards the end. I think that it's just because everything is new but I'm still living in the dorms. Everytime someone is loud, I have this impulse to go tell them to be quiet. I think I'm finally coming to terms with the fact that I'm leaving Student Housing.
Sometimes I get so frustrated at how long it takes for friendships to form.
Training has been really busy, but not nearly as bad as RA training. RA training is so regimented, while Summer Advising is much more relaxed with long breaks where Roxy & Devin (Student Coordinators) try to figure out what to talk about next. I think the big problem with training is that Heidi (Orientation Coordinator) is on maternity leave. But just in general, things are so disorganized that it becomes stressful. There are still a million problems that won't get solved until tomorrow at least. It's making me nervous!
Despite everything, I still feel bored. I'm busy all day and come back to an empty room and I'm not sure what to do all night. It's not like RA training where you have a million things to do in preparation. Kristen just wrote in her journal about not knowing what she did in past summers, and I feel the same way. How did I avoid this feeling that I'm just wasting my life sitting here? Actually, I remember being bored out of my mind last summer, but what about before that? Maybe I'm just used to being constantly busy. But this is like the work world, right? Being really busy during the day and coming home to nothing. I actually think I might go get a GRE book and start working through it. That's how bored I am. Oh fuck, I should start working out too.
In other news, I got a bitchin' GPA last quarter. I actually got an A+ in my Cultural Ecology class! Haha, when I saw the grade I immediately regretted working so hard, because an A counts the same as an A+. I also got all A- in my other classes, so that's pretty exciting. I don't know how I pull off these grades, honestly. I've been really lucky (especially in ANT 125, that class was sooo hard).
Next year's jobs are lining up nicely (but they are intimidating the shit out of me). I've already been "oriented" to my English Peer Advisor position. I know my supervisor (Lynda Jones, the awesome English Dept Advisor) and my office is pretty damn cool. Then on Saturday, I was "oriented" to my Event Coordinator job at the Student Programs & Activities Center (SPAC). I really can't wait for that job, I think it's going to be so much fun (and a ton of work). I also have an assistant for that - she was the other finalist for the position and she doesn't get paid (awkward). I'm having lunch with my boss and my assistant at Bistro tomorrow (free Bistro lunch!) so that'll be pretty cool, I think. And I was just hired for my third job on Monday, which will be Events Coordinator for Campus Unions and Campus Recreation. I have a staff of 5, so we'll all come up with events to do and then I'll make sure everything gets done. That'll be a pretty fun job too. I'm just not sure how all this will get done. Fortunately, I have a lot of subordinates to help me!
I was also talking to Eisha, who's a summer advisor and also a member of the Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Arts & Lectures (which I'm on, and which I want to quit because Lisa Papagni is on the board and she hates me). Eisha said the board is really cool because you get two free tickets to a bunch of Mondavi Center shows and you get to review them later at the meetings. So now I'm thinking maybe I won't quit that one. I don't know. I think maybe I should quit all my Chancellor's Committees. Such a tough decision.
So next year is looking up. It's going to be a tough year initially because of all the changes, but hopefully I'll be so busy that I won't have time to think about it!
The past few days have been really weird. I'm still having a hard time catching up on sleep after finals - the four days in between finals week and SA didn't help, surprisingly. I'm also just having a hard time with the adjustment of not being an RA, and I'm missing my friends a whole lot. With the long days of training and preparation for the advisees, I've been really stressed, tired, and not much fun lately.
As a result, I'm kind of feeling left out and isolated from everyone. I play with Reina and Chelsea, but I get scared that I'll be known as the guy that only talks to RAs. And I'm not even an RA anymore, so I don't want that stigma. I get along great with everyone, but I don't feel very connected to people. As bad as it sounds, I really want to go out and drink and go crazy with some of the 21 year olds here, but they live in Building 1 and I don't see them. And I'm too tired to be doing that anyway (but that didn't stop me in Australia). I'm making friends but I'm afraid that with cliques forming already, I won't get to be a part of any of them.
But really, I think that all my hesitation and weirdness is just the result of my life changing drastically. I miss being an RA, as much as I began to hate it towards the end. I think that it's just because everything is new but I'm still living in the dorms. Everytime someone is loud, I have this impulse to go tell them to be quiet. I think I'm finally coming to terms with the fact that I'm leaving Student Housing.
Sometimes I get so frustrated at how long it takes for friendships to form.
Training has been really busy, but not nearly as bad as RA training. RA training is so regimented, while Summer Advising is much more relaxed with long breaks where Roxy & Devin (Student Coordinators) try to figure out what to talk about next. I think the big problem with training is that Heidi (Orientation Coordinator) is on maternity leave. But just in general, things are so disorganized that it becomes stressful. There are still a million problems that won't get solved until tomorrow at least. It's making me nervous!
Despite everything, I still feel bored. I'm busy all day and come back to an empty room and I'm not sure what to do all night. It's not like RA training where you have a million things to do in preparation. Kristen just wrote in her journal about not knowing what she did in past summers, and I feel the same way. How did I avoid this feeling that I'm just wasting my life sitting here? Actually, I remember being bored out of my mind last summer, but what about before that? Maybe I'm just used to being constantly busy. But this is like the work world, right? Being really busy during the day and coming home to nothing. I actually think I might go get a GRE book and start working through it. That's how bored I am. Oh fuck, I should start working out too.
In other news, I got a bitchin' GPA last quarter. I actually got an A+ in my Cultural Ecology class! Haha, when I saw the grade I immediately regretted working so hard, because an A counts the same as an A+. I also got all A- in my other classes, so that's pretty exciting. I don't know how I pull off these grades, honestly. I've been really lucky (especially in ANT 125, that class was sooo hard).
Next year's jobs are lining up nicely (but they are intimidating the shit out of me). I've already been "oriented" to my English Peer Advisor position. I know my supervisor (Lynda Jones, the awesome English Dept Advisor) and my office is pretty damn cool. Then on Saturday, I was "oriented" to my Event Coordinator job at the Student Programs & Activities Center (SPAC). I really can't wait for that job, I think it's going to be so much fun (and a ton of work). I also have an assistant for that - she was the other finalist for the position and she doesn't get paid (awkward). I'm having lunch with my boss and my assistant at Bistro tomorrow (free Bistro lunch!) so that'll be pretty cool, I think. And I was just hired for my third job on Monday, which will be Events Coordinator for Campus Unions and Campus Recreation. I have a staff of 5, so we'll all come up with events to do and then I'll make sure everything gets done. That'll be a pretty fun job too. I'm just not sure how all this will get done. Fortunately, I have a lot of subordinates to help me!
I was also talking to Eisha, who's a summer advisor and also a member of the Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Arts & Lectures (which I'm on, and which I want to quit because Lisa Papagni is on the board and she hates me). Eisha said the board is really cool because you get two free tickets to a bunch of Mondavi Center shows and you get to review them later at the meetings. So now I'm thinking maybe I won't quit that one. I don't know. I think maybe I should quit all my Chancellor's Committees. Such a tough decision.
So next year is looking up. It's going to be a tough year initially because of all the changes, but hopefully I'll be so busy that I won't have time to think about it!