Learning Curve

It's been a bit of a trying week. I feel that there were things I always heard about (since I heard a lot sitting in that office), and thought "Okay, that would be tough, but I could handle it." And a lot of those things came up this week and for a bit of it, I was freaking out just as much as some of my residents.

On Tuesday night, the stalker situation came forward. A woman had gone through a friend to tell one of my RAs, who came to me Monday night and Tuesday night to tell me what was going on. Stalker was on my waiting list to move into my building, was only on my waiting list, and slept in his car because he was so uncomfortable with where he was really supposed to be living. So I went to our Director (eep), our Assignments Coordinator, and lo and behold, he's not in my building (though he apparently begged and pleaded quite a bit). Anyway, so this young woman wants to talk to him about how to tone it down with her, and is really un-okay with informing UPD about the situation, even though I told her we really need to inform them. I need to follow up with her tomorrow...

There was also a suicide threat on Tuesday night (yes, lots of fun on Tuesday). Apparently this student had been on medication, was no longer. So I asked to see him today. Talk about the shortest and the most difficult conversation I have ever had in my life. One word answers, refuses to go see a counselor because "they would only put him on more medication anyway" and is mad at the friend who called UPD on Tuesday night after her conversation with him. Whew. So the conversation was all of 5 minutes... what more can I do? I was full of such nerves leading up to this conversation, and after he left I was so frustrated. I asked him to follow up with me next week, that I encouraged him to go see a counselor. I know he won't. And I don't know that I can do more than that.

On the plus side, I had my Hall Council interest meeting tonight. I had seven show up, and about five email me saying they were interested, but couldn't come to the meeting. I think that shows something good-- yay! One of the women running for president already went out and bought posters. Exciting! She's on the ball, and really impressed me from the minute I met her tonight (I haven't really seen her until then!). So I'm super excited. There's ideas I would like to see happen, and it seems a lot of them are already inspired with things they can do too...

I feel like programming here in general is very all over the place, but gosh knows I've got enough experience/ideas/energy to get it going. We have an Assistant Director that oversees everything programming, so I have to create a semester program plan with my staff, have a 1:1 with him about our plan (done!), and yeah. It's a little crazy. I'm still kind of unsure how I feel about it, but we'll see how it goes.

Yay. Oh! And I am going to try and get a Campus Sweeps program started here... it might start as my personal judicial sanction, but I want to try and work with the Alcohol Education program to establish something like that. Exciting!

That is all. :)