Residence Assistants living the suite life
Residence assistants Erin Cripps-Woods and Marie Dechant want to get students living in MacEwan University’s Residence to step outside their rooms and embrace their home away from home. As two of the 28 RAs on duty, they’re providing support for a full house this year, but took time from their busy schedules to sit down and talk about life in Residence.
What interested you in becoming RAs?
MD: I lived in residence at Dalhousie University, and it was really fun. But in my next year, I came back to Edmonton and lived in an apartment. It wasn’t the same, so it occurred to me one day that I should move to Residence and apply to be an RA.
ECW: My previous RA asked me because of my eight years in 4-H, counselling kids. I always want to give back, having volunteered with the Students’ Association last year, and felt like this was another way to do that. The biggest appeal was that I wanted to make other people’s experiences as good as mine.
What do RAs do?
ECW: We mostly keep residents involved. We have floor meetings and put up education and social event notifications. Programming is the biggest part of what we do because if you can get people out of their rooms and into an environment where they’re not alone, they’ll have a more positive experience and, I believe, more academic success. Our focus is that we don’t want people to always be having fun. We want them to learn something from whatever they’re doing.
What do you gain from being an RA?
ECW: It’s such a good experience. I didn’t realize how much of a family I would gain by becoming an RA. You have a huge support system – more than I had in my first year, when I had one roommate and that was it. Now I have all these people here.
How does being an RA complement your studies?
MD: Because you’re always participating, your mind is always active. We study with other residents or we share downtime together, playing sports or going for coffee. It keeps you active in school and you always get involved socially.
How do you get people involved?
MD: It’s more that our door is always open to residents and we’re there for them. If they’re having issues with school, they can talk to us. If they need help dealing with personal issues, we have resources to give them. Part of our role is making the experience as interactive as possible.
How do you help students adjust to being away from home?
ECW: Our solution is letting people come talk to us and fostering that sense of community with other residents because if they feel they can connect with someone here, then it feels more like home.
