What is The Future of RDs? – A Dream Scenario

Guest Post by Bonny Sucherman, Residence Life Professional

Picture this: a job where you can roll out of bed (in your swanky $0 rent apartment) 10 minutes before work because you have a zero minute commute. When you get to the office you are greeted by colleagues who are excited to be there and eager to collaborate with you on the important work of supporting, encouraging, and developing the minds and hearts of the next generation of world leaders, content creators, and video game streamers. After a lunch break and stopping home to fawn over Butterscotch (your cat) and take Jellybean (your dog) for a quick walk, you head back to the office and spend some time catching up with your mentees – celebrating their successes and supporting them through a few setbacks. Before you know it it’s 5pm and the office is emptying. Your boss sticks their head in your office and reminds you that it’s time to leave work at work and get home to Butterscotch and Jellybean (who are surely ready to demand dinner when you cross the threshold into your apartment). So you follow your boss out of the building and wave goodbye as you head for home. After enjoying your evening to yourself, you head to bed and take a few minutes to write in your daily gratitude journal: 

1. Butterscotch 
2. Jellybean 
3. My apartment 
4. My job 
5. My family 

You fall asleep quickly, looking forward to the projects that you get to work on tomorrow.

Sound like a dream job thought up by the ghosts of ResLife Past? Well, it is a dream, but it also can and should be the reality of the RD job. Unfortunately, it seems that in recent years the RD job has received the reputation of being more of a nightmare than anything else. Being forced to live at work is not seen as a benefit when the apartments are old, outdated, and lacking basic amenities like in-unit washer/dryer (leaving professional staff to navigate the challenges and awkwardness of sharing a laundry room with the same students that they spend their days and nights with at work). Those days and nights with students have some highlights of course, but they far too often become putting out another fire, being yelled at by a parent, or having a student threaten to have their lawyer get involved. These interactions are of course coming at a time when you are exhausted and past the point of burnout, but you can’t yet think about a new job because you can’t afford to lose that crappy apartment that is tied to your employment. So you continue to show up to the office, knowing that each day you will get some other evening or weekend or overtime (unpaid) task thrown your way, with the reasoning being “other duties as assigned” and of course that you’re already on campus because you live here. So you try to get home in time to gulp down a protein shake and bag of chips for dinner before your evening staff meeting. By the time it’s over, (well past 10pm after you finish answering all the RA questions and getting stopped by residents with noise complaints on the way back down the hall), you get back to your lonely apartment (you wish you could have a cat friend, but your campus doesn’t allow pets), and you’re lucky if you have any time or energy left before crawling into bed to work on your ever-present goal of improving your self care. You lay down and manage to pull out your “daily” gratitude journal for the first time in weeks, but all you write is:

1. Coffee 

…before remembering that you better check your email because it’s been a few hours, and you’re worried about missing any requests that your boss often sends late at night. You finally get to sleep and hope that you might eventually be able to negotiate for some flex time to make up for these late staff meeting nights, but for now your alarm is still set for 7am to be in the office when it opens at 8:30am.

This nightmare scenario should sound so outland-ish and over the top that you wouldn’t even dare worry that this is happening to RDs at any institution anywhere. The bad news is that the second scenario is a lot more like reality than the first for many RDs and entry-level professionals in the field right now. The good news is there is a real opportunity to change that.

I went to the GLACUHO Conference my first year in the profession (any guesses what year…) and the theme that year was “Crossroads” (mostly because it was hosted at a train depot), but it seems that now more than ever, Higher Education and Student Affairs is at a crossroads, and there is a real, intentional decision that needs to be made about the RD role on campuses all across the nation. That second scenario is not sustainable for the field, but with just a few small changes and commitments, the RD role really can be a dream job. When I was in Grad School and folks would inevitably ask me what my professional aspirations were, my response every time was “ I want to be an RD.” I would quickly be asked the follow-up question of, “no, no, long term…after you’re an RD for a few years,” and it was so hard for me to think beyond that because at the time I thought that the RD job was such a cool, unique, and impactful job that I couldn’t imagine wanting to give it up after just a few years. I still think the RD job has that potential to be both gratifying for the professional and impactful for the students that they serve.

So, what is the future of the RD position? Well, to me, the answer is clear, but the decision is up to Directors, VPSAs, Presidents, and Human Resource departments all across the country. Maybe, the decision is even up to you.