Clunking Heads on Campus: Tales of a Resident Advisor

By Nana B. Burn

Clunking Heads on Campus: Tales of a Resident Advisor is a fun and thought- provoking account of the thought processes of an international student from a non- liberal background who becomes RA to thirty-six freshmen in a very liberal college setting. She shares snippets of her experiences as an RA and the not-so-mundane shocks of coed living. Her story is for internationals worldwide who are curious about life on US campuses, and for local Americans who are about to embark on their journeys to college. She shares tips, tricks, and ideas of being a freshman dorm RA, which can be applied in a variety of settings. Most importantly, she sheds light on the ways in which her faith allowed her to flourish in spite of mainstream hindrances. After growing up all over the world, Nana B. Brun came to the United States at eighteen to study mathematics and physics. She became an RA during her senior year in college, when she was twenty-one years old.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jan 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9781449780807

Nana B. Burn

Nana B. Brun, also known as "Baps", came to the United States at the age of eighteen to pursue a bachelor of arts degree. Within five years, after majoring in physics and mathematics, she also obtained her master’s degree and PhD in medical physics. Now she lives in Missouri, where she enjoys working in the clinic with cancer patients and pursuing other interests, including writing, playing the piano, and TV presenting. Growing up, Baps traveled with her family around the world. She speaks English, French, and two dialects from her native Ghana. Baps’ faith has shaped who she is today. She has also learned that because God is in control, it is important to make the most of one’s circumstances—good and bad. Her experiences as a resident advisor included many sweet life lessons. She hopes that by sharing them, she will rock the world of all readers!

Book preview

Copyright © 2013 Nana B. Brun.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

WestBow Press books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

1-[phone]

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4497-8081-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-8082-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-8080-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012924257

WestBow Press rev. date: 1/10/2013

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1 √(-1) (Get Real)

Chapter 2 Welcome, Second Wallibu East!

Chapter 3 My Senior Year: Getting Ready

Chapter 4 Freshmen Arrive

Chapter 5 Hall Sports, Beer, Fire Alarms, Write-Ups

Chapter 6 Conflicts

Chapter 7 Sex

Chapter 8 Agree or Disagree

Chapter 9 Life’s a Beach

Chapter 10 Ode of a Freshman Dorm RA

Chapter 11 Hall Activities

Chapter 12 I Graduate

Chapter 13 Residents Graduate

Chapter 14 The End

Final Tips

What Type of RA are You?

About the Author

Acknowledgments

For Keli (pronounced key-lye) and James, two dear and wonderful residents.

Preface

Every year, a plethora of applications are mailed to admissions offices of US colleges and universities. A significant proportion of applicants have dreamed for years about enrolling in specific institutions, while others apply because they are newly educated about the opportunities awaiting them. International students are generally crazy about coming to the United States—for good reasons. After all, the United States has the largest number of universities, many of which are world renowned. Also, with many generous alumni, financial aid is not hard to find. When these attributes are compounded with the fact that the United States has a booming entertainment industry and a seemingly laidback, fun, and free society where citizenship is not a factor of birthplace, religion, blood, or creed, the draw becomes even more intense.

Upon arrival on US turf, many are already aware of who they are. Some are about to discover, while others simply conform. They enter a brand-new world where nothing is what it seems and where it takes patience, common sense, and self-discipline to learn to discern the layers. As a freshman new to the United States, I had my own learning curve. During my senior year, I was fortunate enough to land a position as an RA (resident advisor), which revealed how little I had actually learned.

Being an RA is an entirely different ballgame from being an ordinary college-goer. Once you accept the RA position, the assumption is that you’ve joined the big people, whether or not it rings true in the RA’s actions. On some campuses, RAs are exempt from room and board expenses, and on others—like mine—we were automatically assigned single dorm rooms.

Although not itself an Amish institution, HardNoggins (fictional name) was a small liberal arts college situated in a small Amish county on the East Coast, and needless to say, it was the main consumer of electricity. It was located in a small city that I shall refer to in this book as the city. I did not attend college with any of the Amish, but I did have the opportunity to visit some Amish farms. I will forever remain in awe of their simplicity and respect for nature. My story is indeed based on true events. However, I have changed the names of the places and people involved.

The liberal atmosphere of HardNoggins College would be one to adjust to, especially for one coming from a very non-liberal background. Originally from Ghana, I had also grown up in South Africa, England, and the United Arab Emirates before coming to study in the United States of America. One of my aims was to never get stuck in a bubble. I knew I was on the right track when I witnessed heads clunking—mine included. From this stems the title of my book. Enjoy!

1

√(-1) (Get Real)

Okay, so here’s the deal: I got rejected from the Ivy leagues I applied to during high school. I was really upset, as you can imagine, and I felt worthless for quite some time. What made things worse was the fact that many of my friends got accepted into Ivy League schools with full rides. I felt I was better and more qualified, so I blamed my rejection on a number of other factors. First, my last two years of high school were spent in a boarding school in my native Ghana, which was far away from home in the Middle East. I had never really settled in. That definitely affected my performance. Second, with all the mosquitoes, hard-knock life, and rigorous academic curriculum, I fell really sick during the mock examinations. The test scores, I later learned, would be officially used as reference for future college applications. Third, this was the year following the 9/11 attacks. Let me remind you that home was in the Middle East. Surely, the Ivy League schools must have thought I was a potential threat.

From rationalizing, I moved to self-pity as I remembered the days in my previous high school where I was ranked #1. I was the center of attention and praised endlessly by teachers for ruining the curve. It was a good school to be in. Although I was classified as a smarty in my new high school, I lost a little bit of my magic for the reasons I’ve already mentioned. My final grades were solid, but my predicted grades were the ones that really counted. And those were subpar.

Luckily, I had applied to other schools and managed to get onto the wait list of the top liberal arts schools. In the end, I accepted an offer to one of the liberal arts schools. It was the only thing I could do. I was on one hand relieved that I could go somewhere, and on the other hand, I was disappointed that it wasn’t somewhere more renowned, such as Harvard or UPenn. This was a very humbling situation for me.

I was even more humbled to learn on arrival on campus how underrated my college was. You see, the problem is that as internationals, we take college and university rankings too seriously. A college that is ranked thirty-sixth is not necessarily inferior to one that is ranked eleventh, or let alone thirty-fifth! One must ask what factors are being compared. Even if these factors are rated differently, one’s own experience might be different. At the end of the day, one’s degree and performance in college depend on one’s experience and perception of the institution. It may help to use these rankings as a guide if one already has prepared a list of intolerable university characteristics. If not, then one must be prepared to forgo numbers and, most importantly, an inflated perception of self.

Congratulations if you have been accepted into an Ivy League school or other highly renowned institution! My hope is that you will continue to work hard and take advantage of all the opportunities laid out in front of you. If these opportunities are not laid out in front of you, then find them.

Congratulations if you have been accepted to a college and are about to undertake that adventure away from parents! My hope is that you will continue to work hard and take advantage of all the opportunities laid out in front of you. If these opportunities are not laid out, then find them.

If you have not been accepted to any college, please note that your journey has not ended. This is only the beginning. Continue to seek other opportunities by applying to different colleges. Seek advice from knowledgeable counselors. Retake the SATs unless you made a perfect score the last time. Write a more mind-blowing essay. One sign of a strong individual is that when beaten, he or she can get up again. Get up. There’s work yet ahead for you.

No matter where one ends up or what one does, perspective is what will make or break the individual. Being in the Ivy Leagues is not the solution to life. If that were so, people would live forever and we would have no wars in the world. Life is learned through living, and one of the best ways to do so is to surround oneself with different people, constantly serve, listen, and give. This doesn’t exist only at Ivy League schools.

Once in America, I sheepishly concluded that I was truly in an amazing institution and surrounded by rich minds. I strived to take full advantage of the opportunities available at HardNoggins College. I took part in theatrical productions and physics research projects, taught science to a class of third graders, volunteered at a kids summer camp, took voice lessons, served as an international orientation assistant, took a ballet class for credit, majored in mathematics and physics, attended church services downtown, participated in Christian fellowship, played the piano for live stage productions, got elected as a residence hall representative for student senate, and, at the end of it all, still decided to submit an application for the position of a freshman dorm RA.

After all this, I still managed to graduate cum laude in three years. I also got accepted as a graduate student into several top-notch universities (some of them Ivy League). Had I known that to begin with, I wouldn’t have cared to push myself or tried to enjoy what I had. The most important thing I learned from my transition from high school to college was not simply a matter of coming to terms with my subperformance but rather how to perform well in spite of the results and the current situation. There is no sense in trying to relive the past and to play over again one’s failures. The questions become these: What can I do with what I have today? Will I throw it away because I could have done better, or will I take care of it because of what it may become tomorrow?

With the latter mind-set, I, also known as Baps, entered Wallibu Hall during my first year of college, home to the majority of freshmen residents. My RA was from Pakistan. She was quite a decent RA. During my senior year in college, I put myself in her shoes. I must confess that these shoes were a little big.

2

Welcome, Second Wallibu East!

Image1_Welcome.tif

Welcome to Wallibu, to the second floor.

Make sure you’re in the east

And knock on the door

Because in Second Wallibu,

We’ll have you any day!

So come on to Wallibu,

Where life’s a beach!

My freshman residents and I performed our little song to the tune of Born in the USA at the HardNoggins Parade, an annual event that marked the exciting arrival of freshmen on campus. Apart from the nineteen-year-old who feigned a serious reaction to some crabmeat he had eaten the previous day, it wasn’t challenging coaxing these spring chickens into the competitive hullabaloo. Tickets for the entire hall to Six Flags and a pizza party for the runners-up were the rewards. Who could possibly outperform the virtuoso saxophonists in our ensemble?

During my freshman year, one hall strutted down the Green Carpet¹ as human condoms, while we tooted our way down campus as Little Mermaids. No boundaries was our motto. I also lived in the same residence hall, Wallibu, as my current freshmen residents. I, however, used to live on an all-girls floor. Although cleaner and fresher smelling, our hall was truly dysfunctional—our hall bonding was practically nonexistent. This was unfortunate, since we came from different countries, such as the United States, Japan, India, China, Ghana, Tanzania, and Pakistan. However, it was easy to tell apart those who specifically chose to be on an all-girls floor, compared with those whose parents meddled.

My roommate was in the latter category. The only other residents I ever saw in my hall were my roommate and Mia. Actually, I’d be lying to say I was ever around since I spent most evenings in the Blue Theater, rehearsing for The King and I. I was fortunate enough to land a role after arriving thirty minutes late to auditions. Mia and I would often argue over the most irrelevant issues, like English grammar. I speak British English in America, which is quite bizarre, but also a difficult habit to break. Sometimes, I like to say things wrong so that people correct me, and I take that as an opportunity to say how they’re wrong, knowing very well that I’m wrong. Eventually the joker manages to provoke me by saying something like, Girl, I’m American! That really makes me mad, and I respond with, News flash. Americans aren’t the only people who speak English around here. But we loved each other despite our moments.

Something weird ended up happening to everyone else on my freshman hall. Carla ended up leaving a year later. She was a devout Mormon, and the liberal atmosphere of the college didn’t seem to jive well with her personality. Not that it jived with mine, but at least I could pretend to relate. Nara transferred that same year. Mo was always off playing for the varsity soccer team, and not until my final year in college did I bump into Erin.

I was really excited to be the RA of a coed freshman hall just so that I could experience the hall bonding that never existed on my single-sex hall. Hall bonding was the fruit of life for other first-year coed halls. After freshman year, everyone has his or her own friends, cliques, clubs, and whatnots. It’s a lot more difficult to get to know people on a personal level after freshman year. On the other hand, some are just out there to get to know others and have a good time, like Omer from Turkey. He was a sophomore who ended up moving illegally to Wallibu Hall, a freshman hall. He moved into an emergency single, which used to be occupied by another Turkish sophomore presumably in the need of the emergency single. When warned by us RAs to move out immediately, Omer retorted, with his Turkish accent, Whad? Whad am I doing wrong? All I want to doo ees get to know people. And that’s what we liked, especially taking into considering how tightly knit the Turks are. So we ended up not doing anything about the situation.

One major hurdle that would exist if I were to become RA would be my adjusting to coed bathrooms. This was the main reason I did not want to be on a coed floor during my freshman year. It is not the stories I had heard