August 2005 - May 2007

During my sophomore and junior years at the University of Maryland, I played a variety of roles in the university's resident life program.

Starting as a Community Assistant (CA), I manned a desk at strange hours in my residence hall. I took the job for three reasons: I liked the idea of being paid to sit at a desk doing my homework, the staff was great, and it was a nice way to meet new people. An added bonus became apparent immediately: with the hours I worked (12am-6am), I'd get to interact with the kind of person who's awake between midnight and daybreak.

After a year as a CA, I moved up to being a Resident Assistant (RA) for my old freshman residence hall. If there's one way to beat the kind of experiences that come out of dealing with the night crew mentioned above, it's RAing for a floor of sixty freshmen males. Joking aside, my role as RA taught me a great deal about mentoring, organization, conflict resolution, and all sorts of handy real-life skills degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics leave out.

Point of contact: Erin Schlegel, Resident Director <eschlege AT umd DOT edu>