This post is going to cover a lot. Basically, some events happened last night after I posted the Day 9 post and today that have made me both more comfortable and happy at my job, and more critical and questioning of my performance.
Basically, I feel like I am both getting better and worse at this RA thing.
Last night I had a major homesick student. Now, for those of you who have never done anything like RAing little kids, they get homesick. Lots of them get homesick. Lots of them get seriously traumatized at night once all the activities are over and they have nothing to do but think about how much they miss home.
I have never ever had to deal with this sort of thing ever. It was a trial and error process.
I couldn't calm him down by myself and had to call my bosses in to help me (I refer to them as bosses but, although they have authority over me, they don't really treat me like a subordinate or make me feel inferior, so boss is just a title). They ended up talking him to exhaustion and drawing out a long conversation by distracting him with other topics to think about until he went to sleep.
I guess that's one way to solve it!
After my homesick kid went to sleep, I had a good conversation with my two superiors who supported me well and helped me appreciate my efforts, despite the fact that I still had to ask for help and couldn't resolve the issue by myself.
That conversation really helped me feel confident that my strategy of trying to think of the kids as capable thinkers and not as babies to babysit was a good way to approach these problems. It helped me with some of the confidence issues I've outlined in previous posts and gave me some courage for today.
Tomorrow I'll continue this train of thought and describe each situation in more detail (I'm very sleepy right now) and explain why today's events backtracked on those feelings of accomplishment and success yesterday.
Goodnight all,
Kevin
Hey! If there's anything I learned from the becoming an RA process, is that your team is (or should be) ALWAYS there to help you with any issues you have. You don't have to be the only person to deal with these kids. Don't ever feel like you're less capable of anything just because you need to ask for help. Especially since you've never RA'ed before! Everything is a learning process. You've got this :)
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