New leaves

I'm a Resident Assistant at my college; it's my second year as an RA. More or less what I do is act as a resource to the other students on my hall, plan and execute programs, run hall meetings, that sort of thing. I don't get paid, but it's not a difficult job and I like people.

I'm applying to be a House President next year. The HP position is arguably more exclusive than the RA position; each hall has one HP and multiple RAs (my hall has six RAs). Far fewer people apply to be HP, though, and it's also a different job - HPs sit on committees and attend meetings and in general are involved more indirectly on hall. I'm applying nonetheless, as I don't think I can handle another year as an RA (I love it, I really do, but it takes a lot out of you) but I still want to be involved. A change would be good.

I went through the second step of the application process today. The first step is the paperwork, which was due last month. Today it was Carousel, which is a series of group activites. It's a chance for the evaluators to see how we interact in groups and how we compose ourselves.

Our group was exclusively HP candidates - seven of us. Of the seven, four are planning to go abroad next year; their applications will be deferred a year. The other three (myself included) are applying for the 08-09 academic year.

It went well, I think. I don't pretend to be the most qualified candidate, or the person who'd make the best HP, but as of right now I'd rate my chances as "sufficiently decent as to not inspire terror in me". Whatever that means.

Surprisingly, current Res Staff members played a huge role in evaluation. I'm a bit disappointed to not be able to be on the other side of the fence (I would be on the evaluation side this year did I not want to be a House President...), because I think it must be so interesting to watch the interactions without worrying that we'd say that looked terrible, but hopefully I'll just be on Res Staff next year and participate then.

I am glad, at least, that I did not sound incredibly moronic. I hope. We'll have to wait and see.