What I Wish I had Known My Freshman Year of College

As I am entering my last semester of college, I have begun to look back on my college experience. There are a lot of things that I wasn't told in the handful of books I read about college life, freshman experiences, and what to expect when I moved away from home. I wish that I could go back in time and change a few things, but I am also very happy with how my college life turned out, I have surrounded myself with people I love and I am pursuing a career that fits me wonderfully. I know that it might be cheesy, but not only was I once a freshman in college, I was a Resident Advisor to mostly First Year students in my two years as an RA. So if you stuck around until now, here you go: some of the best advice I wish I had known as a freshman in college.

1) Self-fulfilling prophecies are the real deal. 
What I mean when I say that is if you enter college with a solid mindset, that is how your experience is going to be. I was a social butterfly to say the least when I was in grade school, but I had serious anxiety about moving away from my friends and I thought it would be extremely difficult for me to make friends. It was. I had my mind set that if I was going to make friends it would just happen, with no effort. I wish so badly I could go find my freshman self and drag her to welcoming activities or to the floor meetings I always seemed to skip. It took me years to realize that if I wanted to have friends to hang out with that weren't my boyfriend, I needed to get out of my room and make them!

2) Opening weekend activities in the Residence Halls (dorms) are stupid, but you should still go to them.
This goes back to what I was saying in my previous post, you will make friends if you go to these programs and participate. They might not be the friends that you have for the rest of your life or even the rest of college, but friends are friends, and you do not want to be eating in the dinning commons by yourself all year.

3) You do not need to be best friends with your roommate.
This particular piece of advice is one that I have given numerous times over the last two years. I did not go into any roommate-ship with the expectation of either being best friends or enemies with my roommate. The roommate world is not black and white. Sometimes you will become best friends with your roommate, but what it all boils down to is that you need to be considerate, open-minded, and able to communicate to anyone you are sharing space with.

4) Do your roommate agreement. 
Don't write something ridiculous. I heard while I was an RA these two students wrote something along the lines of "Make money. Get girls." And when real problems came up they did not have any documentation of expectations. Communicating your expectations to your roommate is very important. If you do not want them to have their significant other over every night of the week, you need to communicate that. If your expectation is that they need to maintain a somewhat clean side of the room, communicate that. I blew off my roommate agreements when I was a resident and I am thankful every day that there were not problems with me and my roommate.

5) Be nice to your RA. 
This one is personal, I have read other people's advice as saying "befriend your RA and they won't write you up as much." I cannot say if this is true or not *wink wink*, but I have had residents who just would say things like "I hate RA's so much!" or "I can't wait until I don't have to live with an RA." Trust me, there are times that your RA will not want to live with you either. But I have received a few notes from residents that tell me that they enjoy chatting with me or that I was their favorite part of moving to college, and those residents made the most unbearable nights worth it in the end. Your RA is fountain of knowledge about your school, they have taken a lot of the classes you need to take and they know about a lot of resources on campus. Go to them and ask them questions when you have them, they want to talk to you and get to know you!

6) Pursue a degree you are passionate about.
I spent two years going towards a degree in business. I did well in all of my classes, but I was just never passionate about business (accounting? business calculus?). I took a child development class for one of my general education requirements, and I haven't looked back since. I have loved going to classes, I have loved my teachers, and everything that I learn about is interesting to me. I have my heart set on being an elementary school teacher, and I will always tell my students that they should be whatever they want to be!

7) Ask for help. 
I know that I already touched on this a little bit on number five, but I am serious when I say this. Know your limits, If you don't understand material for a class you should take advantage of your professor's office hours. See what resources your school has for tutoring, my school has multiple programs that offer free tutoring for different subjects and majors. You are paying for these resources with your tuition, use them.

8) Finally, take a minute (or a few) between the classes and studying and work to enjoy yourself. People will say that college is the best years of your life. I don't know if that is the truth, but I still think everyone in college should try and make the most out of the experience and have a little fun--after you take care of your responsibilities!

You just need to make the most of your first year of college! I hope you have a wonderful experience and that college is everything you want it to be and more! 

Additional Bulletin Boards!

So, as promised, I am bringing you some extra bulletin boards! The Behind-the-Desk board in my building has become the Calendar Board! I think that this will be super cute to continue for the last three months of the school year. So here it is!

And also, my best friend and co-worker, Ashley thought up this brilliant idea for her bulletin board! It is for Women's History Month, but I think that you could do this bulletin board any month! Inspired by Wonder Woman she titled the board "Wonderful Women." She spotlighted the following influential women: Marie Curie, Susan B. Anthony, Dorothy Komenshek, and Estee Lauder. Our school was also doing a lot of events for Women's History Month and she included information on those as well.

January/February 2014 Bulletin Boards

Hello to my Bulletin Board Seeking RA Friends! Below is my personal hallway bulletin board along with the bulletin board I created with my floor buddy!

I was inspired to create this bulletin board by an ad campaign about sexual consent. I thought this bulletin board was relevant also because spring fever brings love to all residence halls. I found a slogan that I liked and then attached speech bubbles around the sides that were ways for residents to ask for consent or to understand when consent is not given. On the far end I included information about consent (ex: When you are under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol you cannot give consent). Attaching condoms made this bulletin board extremely popular. If you search on Pinterest about Sexual Consent you will find tons of ideas.

This is not what I used to create this bulletin board, but if you are interested in re-creating I would highly reccomend giving it a look.

I saw this bulletin board idea originally with the Up! house (from the movie Up! by Pixar) and the house had balloons attached to it and residents could write about what lifts them up on the balloons. The balloon die-cuts we have are really small and I wanted residents to write a lot and have a lot of people be able to write. WARNING/UPDATE: There were a lot of inappropriate messages on this board over the month so be careful to monitor it.

Bulletin Boards

My wing bulletin board for the month of October was inspired by this Infograph that I found on Pinterest over the summer and I thought it would make an impactful bulletin board. I originally had nineteen of the facts drawn, colored, cut out, and typed up. Sadly I was only able to fit eleven on my board! If this happens to you a good idea would be to stretch the bulletin board throughout your hallway and just put the remaining facts on construction paper and post them up everywhere.

My floor buddy and I decided on an adaptation to a bulletin board I found on Pinterest (and cannot find the picture!). The board is "Do You Give A Ripppppppppp?" We found a bunch of ad type papers that you are able to rip a portion of the bottom off to get the information. I found the majority of mine on the internet but my floor buddy made all of hers.

This month my floor buddy and I made a "Goal Ball Machine" where residents could write their goals on circles. I thought for the most part it has been successful and we have only had a couple residents that took advantage of the interactive board by writing inappropriate messages.

How to Be A Successful Student Bulletin Board

When I got back to the residence halls for RA Training I realized that my staff meant business and that everyone was going to have exceptional bulletin boards. I love making my bulletin boards so the fact that I was going to have the pleasure of living in a building surrounded by fantastic boards was music to my ears. I was inspired by this picture/chart/thing I found on Pinterest and I took the idea and ran with it.

My board is broken up into the following categories:

-Living Somewhere New

-Living With a Roommate

-Managing Your Time (my personal favorite)

-Getting the most out of college

And in case I had residents that did not want to read the whole board (because those residents are everywhere, right?)

-Surviving the Year Cheat Sheet

I love this board because it allowed me to freehand and trace a ton of pictures and make the board super colorful and eye-grabbing. But if you are looking for your back-to-school bulletin board I hope mine inspires your's!

Sailboat Door Decs!

Hello hello! It is back to school again, and I want to share with all of the RAs that follow my blog my door decs for the semester! I made 45 of these things and it took weeks to complete them. I will warn you that each door dec cost me a little less than $1 so if you are interested in recreating this idea and not spend as much I will be sure to include a cheaper supplies list at the end!

What I used to make the Door Decs:

This Template

Colored Cardstock (one piece for each door dec)

Brown Cardstock (bottom piece of boat)

Lighter Brown Cardstock (main boat frame)

Flat craft sticks

Fabric for the sales

Cotton Balls for clouds

I printed the template out onto cardstock and used it to trace out the different parts of the boat and sails. You would think that would be the most tedious part of the whole thing, the tracing and cutting out of all the pieces. Nope! Gluing definitely took the longest, I would glue 15 together and be done fore the night! But once I had them all finished they looked fantastic. To make the clouds you just have to gently pull at a cotton ball until it looks like a cloud and glue it on! I think the template made this so much easier than it would have been if I was just working from scratch.

Here are some more pictures!:

 This was the first one I completed, I was super proud.

 These are the different designs I made for my residents.

My finished works of art taking over the dining room table.

Because I did not want to include a Resident's name or room number on my blog I will show you the personalized door dec I made for myself!

I used two different fonts, one to write the name of the resident and the other to do the room number.

I even included cats!

I know that not many RAs are interested in spending $1 per door dec so here are some different ways that you can make this door dec with cheaper supplies:

Instead of Cardstock, use construction paper! It is much cheaper and you get a lot more for the price.

Instead of fabric, also use construction paper, or possibly tissue paper, get creative!

Hand write your resident's names instead of using computer paper and ink to print them out.

Spring Closing Bulletin Board

So this is my Spring Closing Bulletin Board! I got my inspiration from the border that I bought from the dollar tree! It has flowers and bumble bees! The rest was my original ideas. I thought up the title "It's Time to Leave the Nest" and printed out bird coloring pages, colored them in, and wrote all of the RA's names on them. Then I made a garden on the bottom of the board with each of the residents on the floor. Every RA was assigned a color for their residents (I thought this idea was pretty brilliant of me!). I added the closing information that the housing office gave me and that was it! So easy, creative, and wonderful!

Think Before You Ink Bulletin Board

I just finished my most recent bulletin board! The title is Think Before You Ink and it is all about tattoos.

I included six sections on this bulletin board.

1) Top 10 Tattoo Fails: This is where I found ten terrible tattoos from Pinterest and Google Images to make my board more eye-catching and draw residents in to read my information.

2) Tat Stats: Five statistics about tattoos, including percent of Americans that regret their ink.

3) Before: What to do before you get a tattoo.

4) After: What to do after you get your tattoo.

5) Placement: The most painful and least painful places to get tattoos.

6) Removal: Tattoo removal methods (mostly laser removal).

DIY Dreamcatcher!

I am sorry that I have been away, school has been super busy and so has work! But moving on to the tutorial. So I did a program of making dreamcatchers for my residents! It turned out really well, and I was able to get enough materials for 30+ dreamcatchers at Hobby Lobby for less than $13! This can be done with anyone that has some basic craft skills, but I wouldn't recommend it for young children. This craft is probably 8 years and older.

Materials:

-Pipecleaner (I chose brown)

-Yarn (I chose a brown/beige/white tie-dye type yarn)

Cut your yarn into one long piece (at least 1.5 feet) and three smaller pieces for tassels

-Beads (I bought a bag of teal ones)

-Feathers (I chose a more natural brown/white/black bag)

Step 1: Gather your materials

Step 2: Make a circle with your pipecleaner

Step 3: Tie the long piece of yarn onto the pipecleaner circle

Step 4: Use this video (skip ahead to 1:15 for the important stuff) to learn how to make the inside of the dreamcatcher!

Step 5: In order to make sure that the middle of your dreamcatcher stays secure, tie a knot in it and add a bead for embellishment! Cut off any little strings of yarn you do not want hanging.

Step 6: Add your three tassels to the bottom of your dreamcatcher (or anywhere you want them) and cut them to desired length. Also, cut a small piece of yarn and make a loop at the top in order to hang your dreamcatcher.

Step 7: Add beads and feathers to your tassels and you are done! But beware: this could take a very long time depending on how detailed you want your beadwork/featherwork to be.

Hang your dreamcatcher over your bed now that it is done. The Ojibwa tribe hung dreamcatchers over their heads so that only their good dreams would be filter through, and would slide down the feathers to their heads.

Rec Room/Lobby Bulletin Boards

Okay so I am in charge of the TV Guide board in the Rec Room next to the tv, and I needed to put together a bulletin board for the Lobby! Here is each one with some tips on how/why it is the way it is!!!

So the theme for our hall this semester is Superheros! So this is what I put together for the TV Guide board! I started out by putting up some navy butcher paper, die-cutted out yellow star boarders, die-cutted TV GUIDE, and die-cutted the citty boarder in black (I know, I love die-cuts). Then I traced the Batman symbol on my tv (hooked up to my computer) and colored it in with paint markers. I also added all of the TV channels in our area, but I thought that this poster showed it best.

This board was a little more fun for me! I used this blog post (that I did not tag in my last post, you can read why there) to do the boarder, but basically I posted the question and die-cut a bunch of coffee cups for residents to write their answers on!

Cuddle Sutra...A Valentine's Day Bulletin Board

Okay so this bulletin board was inspired by a board that I saw my freshman year in the Res Halls! It is from the book The Cuddle Sutra and I took screenshots from the online book and basically put it up on my board. It is super simple but it looks incredible. The boarder was inspired from a post I saw on Pinterest! But I will not be linking to that post because my residents ripped the boarder down, so I am sure most of you other RA's will understand residents vandalizing your boards and whatnot...So here it is, I hope you are inspired to do a cuddle themed board!

Winter Closing Bulletin Board

So it is that time of the semester again...crunch time. And I will not lie, I have neglected my blogging duties and I should have gotten this up over a week ago. So here is my Winter Closing Bulletin Board:

It is a Winter Wonderland Theme!

So I wanted die-cut the title, the "Countdown to Break!" title and the numbers on each circle. I also did the snowmen from the die-cut machine! Behind each number is a winter-themed joke, activity to do on winter break, study tip, or something to do to prepare for closing (in case my residents do not read the rest of the board!). Each snowman has an instruction for preparing for the winter closure and next to that is the timeline where the residents can look (in case they missed my other two explanations) and know what is going on for winter closing.

My tactic behind this board was that no matter what my residents could not say they had no idea they had to be out by 7 pm on December 14. I just hope that Friday at seven we will have an empty building to close!

I am so excited for this semester to be over, and to enjoy my winter break!!!

Doorstop!

So as an RA we like to have our doors open so that students can always come see us! But up until a few days ago I was stuffing a flip-flop in my door to prop it open. Not cute. I got a wooden doorstop and some hot pink paint and glitter nail polish and now I have a beautiful doorstop!

Materials You Will Need:

-Paint (Any type of paint will do, in any color I chose a washable paint)

-Glitter Nail Polish (Probably 1/3-1/2 a bottle)

-Wooden Doorstop!

I took this picture after I finished my doorstop so that's why I didn't include a "before" picture.

Just so you know, my doorstep took four coats of paint--waiting for each coat to dry in between. This project took a couple of days to complete in my free time. So I know you're all dying to see--the finished product!:

So pretty! I love having my door open and propping it with this piece of art!

Girl's Night RA Program

So last night I had a program in my building with some of the ladies (and gentlemen) in my building. My coworker and I hosted this program together and our goal was to have a program promoting body image.

So when we sat down we decided that a "Girl's Night" theme would be best and we wanted to have an activity that had to do with common girl's night activities. So I said I would find a facial to do on Pinterest and in the end I decided that we would do this facial. It was an orange juice/baking soda face mask. All you have to do is combine enough baking soda in orange juice to make a paste and then rub it all over your face! The blogger said that this facial is great at removing blackheads and the acid in the orange juice will tighten your pores and the vitamin C brightens your face. I can agree with all of the above, when doing the face mask (see pictures below) I could feel my blackheads being pulled out of my skin and other people that did the facial with me would agree!

Wearing the orange juice/baking soda facial!

We also wanted to do an activity that would help the girls bond with each other especially if they were not necessarily good friends in the hall. Let's face it, often times if you live on the first floor of the building you don't venture "all the way" to the third floor to hang out with people. This is not always the case, but often it is true. So we had Pick-Me-Up cups at our program as well. The idea behind the Pick-Me-Up cups is that when you are sad you can go to your cup, pull out a slip of paper and read something that your peer said about you that was kind/sweet/funny and it will brighten your mood. So we had the girls get a paper cup and start writing slips of paper about each other, encouraging them to write slips to people outside their group of friends that they came with. This was actually very successful and the girls actually participated and even made a couple cups for their guy friends in the building that only stopped by the program for a short while!

A couple of the notes I found in my Pick-Me-Up cup at the end of the night.

Finally, my favorite part of the program was the Barbie Box that I made! So the idea behind the Barbie Box was to show that the actual "Barbie Body" is not only extremely unhealthy, but impossible. This article was the inspiration I used to make the box. What I found interesting was the facts about how if Barbie was real she would be 6' tall, have a 39" bust, 18" waist, and 33" hips. In short, Barbie would be anorexic. We wanted all of the girls at our program to know that they are beautiful the way they are and that anyone can be Barbie!

This is my box that I made, in my room!

Me in the box!

November Bulletin Board

So my November bulletin board covers the "Financial" aspect of the Wellness Wheel and my board is a Candyland theme! So the title was "The Sweet Path to Financial Responsibility" and each character from the game represented different ways to be financially responsible. It is so cute and all of the people on my floor stop by to look at it all the time!

I used the following "Financial Responsibility" categories and a short explanation of each:
   -What Is Financial Responsibility?
   -App to stave and manage money
        -I chose the smart phone application "Mint" and gave some pro/cons that I found on a review
   -Credit Cards
   -Couponing
   -Budgeting
   -Saving Money
   -Student Discounts (Sacramento State Students and College Students Nationwide)

October Bulletin Board!

So I had to have my October Bulletin Board up today! I am so excited to see if the residents like it! It is a "Physical" themed board and it is Pac Man! The title is: "In life there are no extra lives" meaning that you should treat your body with respect and exercise and eat healthy. My school has a state-of-the-art wellness center that has a fantastic gym and health services department. I actually did a diet analysis and I am meeting with a nutritionist on Wednesday to help me eat healthier and be an all around healthier person! But I know what you really want to see is my board, here it is!

I included the fitness classes that my school's gym has, gym hours, health center cooking demonstrations, and ways to exercise in their rooms along with workouts they can do at the gym!