Rituals of the Past

I opened my e-mail account this morning to find the following e-mail from an old friend....

Greetings Recovering Housing Friends!

Waking up today was not stressful. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t until the news anchor noted the date that I realized it was even August 1st.

Everyone remembers the significance of August 1st RIGHT (or you wouldn’t be getting this email)…training started.

Yes, days and days of policy review, opening of school information, team building exercises, copying lots of stuff, finalizing late RA hires, eating lunch at the Schwebel Room, planning for the RAs to arrive and 1000 other things!

So, nine years after my last August 1st training day started, I can finally enjoy the day. Why? Because I’m NOT going to TRAINING!

Now, this doesn’t mean I didn’t like training, after all I was assigned nine of those years to coordinate some part of training (RA, RD, KIC and GA).

Yes, we still remember it, vividly all these years later. I worked as a Resident Director for 7 years. Seven years of safety and diversity and communication training for two weeks followed by another couple of weeks of passing it on to my own staff. Team building, did she mention the team building exercises? It had fun moments but in some ways it made you long for the craziness of the school year so you could wake up from the training haze. Every night after the numbing training sessions there were rooms to inspect and forms to fill out--ah, those were the days. The good news was 2 months off, or at least 2 months doing something slightly different and enjoying the summer slow down on the campus.

Sometimes I miss those days--mostly those school schedule induced breaks that don't happen in the corporate world. One day someone at work remarked about how calm I was in a crisis. I looked him in the eye and told him I didn't have to worry about keying into a room and finding a dead kid, no drunks threw up on me and the police never called at 4AM so as crisis went this was really nothing.

Down with O.P.P.

I am so tired of finding little girl pee and less often poop sitting in my toilets! What is up with that? When they started potty training I was lucky to get them to go but they ALWAYS flushed. Now I feel like I have to be on potty patrol every time I leave the house so as not to stink the whole place up. They are doing better about wiping well and even washing their hands. Flushing takes what, a second? Isn't it a little ironic that the song by the same name was from Naughty by Nature?

When I was a residence hall director at my alma mater in the early 90s I also worked with the alumni association. They ran a story about the alumni part in the student paper The Marcolian. Someone came and took a decent head shot and it ran with the article. My mother was impressed, I'm doubtful anyone else was. One day I went into the newspaper office, I can't even remember why, I'd never been there as a student. Hanging on their bulletin board was that head shot of me with a thought bubble with that very line in it. The looks on the faces of guys that worked for me was priceless, they stammered and turned red.

Make New Friends and Keep the Old

An old friend came to visit this weekend and it reminded me of a song I learned in my brief stint in the girl scouts--Make New Friends and Keep the Old (one is silver and the other gold). Believe me, you are glad you can't hear me sing it! It made me realize that its been 13 years since I went to work at Kent State as a residence hall director. The people I worked with those four years are some that I am still close to today. Most of us have moved on, I keep in close contact with 2-3 and during the year hear from many of the others. When we worked together we were all single, some were finishing master's degrees, others were working on doctorates, and others were just recovering from one or the other. We worked hard and partied harder. Life as a "grown up" living on a college campus is a strange one, you aren't a student but somehow the real world doesn't seem to fit given the hours you work and the sometimes bizarre situations you find yourself thrown into (which I will write more about in the future--because someone has to!). We were much more than colleagues, we shared a world that few outside of it could really understand and became friends and confidants. Not that long ago we got together during the summer, there were lots of significant others and a few kids thrown into the mix but we played a mean game of "remember when..." the McSweeney 5, PITA, "Apple Hall is not a shithole."

So, 9 years after leaving that world I am married and have 2 kids and 2 stepkids, am living in my own house in the suburbs and working oustide the ivory tower in a job that I stumbled as a temp into while looking for work in my field. I stopped out of the PhD program I was in with half the coursework done and have never returned. Some days I miss university life. My friend, moved on from her days in the residence halls to a job in law enforcement (she carries a gun!) at a huge state school and has finished all the coursework for her PhD. She is single and an intrepid traveler, having gone to England and Scotland last year and returning this year for 7 weeks to do research to finish her degree. Our lives are very different today but spending time with her reminded me of all the good times and why it is good to hang onto the old while you find the new. She remembers me when I was Heather, long before I was Abby & Ellie's Mom and it felt good. I wouldn't trade my life now for anything but its good to remember what was and what other paths might have been taken.