The good old days

One of my best friends is getting married this summer (actually two of them are - in two different countries - so there's definitely a lot of traveling in my future). Anyway, what I meant to tell you before I got sidetracked was this...
One of my best friends is getting married and since I'm in the bridal party, she asked me to send her a picture and blurb for her wedding web site. She wanted me to talk about how I know her.

Writing that little blurb brought back so many memories. We met as Residence Hall Association delegates from two different halls. We both were on the delegation for the regional conference that Fall, which was hosted at our school. Hosting a conference is exciting but being on the delegation kinda sucks. You don't get to stay at the hotel with the other delegates but are usually staying in your own room. There is no fun van-ride to the conference, no late-night adventures. All the focus is on hosting the conference and the conference staff; all the outstanding student leaders are on the conference staff. So the delegations often consist of just a group of wide-eyed first-year students that have no idea what's going on. At least that's what my experience was like. [Don't let that turn you away from hosting a conference though, if you've been thinking about that. I still think hosting a conference is an amazing experience; one of those once-in-a-lifetime kind of things that you'll never forget; life-altering for sure!] So while we met on the delegation, we didn't get "that" close. We saw each other throughout the year, had some friends in common but that was about it.
However, sophomore - or really starting the end of our first-year - was a different story. We went to the national conference together - this time we got the "whole" experience; a week of preparations on campus after the school year had ended, then a flight, staying in a residence hall together (we were roommates), extra days with fun activities. We had also both applied to be RAs and that time we already knew that we'd been hired and would be on the same staff together.

It still took us a while to become really really close friends. We were both overinvolved - me, editor for the student newspaper; her - president of a student organization she'd started. We organized programs together, saw each other at staff meetings, had fun when we were on duty together - but outside of "RA" life, we often went our separate ways. Funny enough, it took a separation for us to become really really close. When she studied abroad second semester, we stayed in touch. We e-mailed, chatted online and suddenly we were best friends. And when she finally returned to campus our junior year, we were inseparable. We came "as a package deal," as one of our friends once said. Together with that friend, an RA from another building, we were known as "The Three Musketeers."

This friendship is definitely one of the most treasured memories from my RA experience. And how much did we learn from each other!!! How I loved our diverse little group! Me from Austria, my best friend from India and our third friend, the Puerto Rican. We were "diversity." And we talked about diversity. We educated our residents about diversity.

But as much as I loved those days, sometimes I look back and I am saddened by the missed opportunities. Yes, we did a good job as RAs. We knew our residents; we built relationships. We did a relatively good job enforcing policies and making sure everyone was safe in our community. We programmed - more than we had to; that's for sure. But how much more could we have gotten out of our communities if we'd been a little more intentional? If someone had told us to have meaningful one-on-one conversations with our residents... If we hadn't just done random programs but actually thought about what we wanted our students to learn, what sequence of learning would make sense.

Oh, how I sometimes wish I could go back to being an RA, to do it all over again - but so much better this time. But one thing is for sure: I'd still make sure that the two of us became best friends.