by Charis Lawson
A waiting room housed by two receptionists is the first thing that one sees as he or she walks into the residential life office. Behind a door, guarded by the blinking swipe access lock is a hallway. Every two steps is a door housing a tiny office. Every single wall is crammed with brightly colored flyers and each tiny desk is warped with a computer screen. The clacking of keyboards is consistently muffled by the hum of the printer.
The hallway melts away into a large room. Two oval tables with rolling grey chairs surrounding it, seven cabinets of all shapes and sizes filled with assorted stamps, paint, colored paper, staplers, three computers, two printers; the residential life office is an arts and crafts paradise. Bulletin boards, paintings of UMBC, and colorful inventories decorate the walls.
At any given moment, the tables are occupied by Community Directors, Residential Assistants, and Faculty working within the same space.
If someone were to sit there for long enough, one could hear conversations of the bachelor, weekend conferences, new programs. A jumble of personalities, positions, and propositions housed within the same space.
Behind the large room, is the kitchen and to the side is another hallway with conference rooms and tiny offices for those who work in facilities. Of course, the place where students can code their new residential card is all the way in the back so the walk of shame allows the resident to interact with the maximum amount of people.
The residential life office is where the magic happens. Conduct, decorating, meetings, every issue has been brought within the confines of the residential life office. Information forms written up by RA’s come to the people working here. Programs are approved here. New ideas on how to run things are conceived here. Anyone who has ever been affiliated with res life has worked here at some time.
If inanimate objects could speak, I wonder what stories the walls could tell.
Edited February 11th so that the post doesn’t include the word “you”
Site looks great, Karis! I love the quotes, though in future, use full names for sources–as these are all positive comments, I’m sure the individuals won’t mind being identified by their full names. Description is also excellent, but note that in news stories we don’t use the second person (“you”) so in future stick to third person. Good work!
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Thanks for the feedback. I have edited both my blog post and the quotes to include the full names.
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