This past week I have learned a lot about how college works through the Summer at Brown Program. We are being put through the ultimate test of college. This program is showing us other aspects of college other than just lectures. We are getting to see how fun RA’s are and the extracurricular activities that go on.
My RA is a student at Providence College and plays basketball. She a really down to earth person and tells it like it is. She leaves no rules uncovered and but tells us to always use our common sense. At the first floor meeting she had us all sit in a circle and basically told us that she had to read these rules word for word with a look on her face of pure annoyance. She knew that we didn’t want to sit there for the whole hour to listen to her read the rules word for word. She managed to make reading rules interesting through her sarcastic tone. It made everyone feel at ease because she didn’t come off as dead serious and boring but she would get strict if she had to. Knowing this made me feel that she had a sense of trust like every student should have with their RA or boss. The kind of trust that the RA puts in us because she knows we won’t screw up. Along with enforcing the rules the RA’s also informed us of extracurricular activities happening around campus.
The extracurricular activities include trips to Boston, outlet stores, dances, ice cream socials, and yoga. All these events helped everyone to form more friendships and to get to know new people that we might not meet otherwise. There are about 900 Summer at Brown students with even more coming in each weekend. The class sizes are about 25 students per class so we are obviously not going to get to meet all of them. The activities help us get to know more people outside of our class rooms.
At the dance I saw people that I had never seen before and we had a fun time just dancing alongside them. When we saw them the next day in the quad we waved at each other and kept walking. This makes it easier to talk to them if we were on a bus together or in line to get food easier and less awkward. The social skills we get here will help us form more relationships when we get back home.
Megan,
ReplyDeletePerhaps now some of what we've been telling you these past seven months will make sense.
We tried to tell you that being a part of the ILC would open up new vistas for you and instill a level of confidence in yourself that you might not otherwise appear for quite some time.
Already we're seeing an improvement in you all in that arena.
And I'm glad you're seeing first hand that we're not the only ones that impose rules. And trust me, Megan, there will be a lot more rules imposed on you by a lot more people and organizations before you become Supreme DIctator of the World and get to call all of the shots yourself.
Embracing these social events helps, too, in that it elevates your confidence in yourself all the while having some fun. And I hear that fun can be a good thing so take it when you can.