Living the Life, or Hardly Living? Essay

Submitted By KaylaaMichellee6113
Words: 1303
Pages: 6

Living the Life, or Hardly Living? Everyone has a career in mind that they would love to pursue. Some people I know want to be living the dream or living the life while working. I have always been interested in the career of a residence hall director. I decided to interview my boyfriend’s sister, Bridget. Bridget works as a residence hall director at Aurora University. From the time I first met her and discovered this was her current career, I was very interested in what she had to do at the university and what it meant to be a residence hall director. Due to the fact that I was interested in learning more about this subject, her career as a residence hall director was the topic that I chose to interview her about. This subject sparked my interest because in the future I would like to work at some type of educational institute. I originally chose Bridget to be my informant for this interview because she is very intelligent. The interview with Bridget took place in my boyfriend’s kitchen at his home. I was going to go to Aurora to interview her at her office but felt like it would be too much of a distraction if something were to come up and she had to go work with the students. During the interview, it was pretty quiet. Nothing else was really going on while I was taking notes and talking to Bridget. We all had just finished eating dinner and her parents were in the dining room talking while I interviewed her. I chose to interview her in an unstructured format. I felt that for this type of interview an unstructured format would work best because it allows the interview to go in the direction that the informant wants to take it. The questions do not get too personal during the interview. During a structured format, some of the questions can be personal or cover topics that they are not allowed to discuss due to job confidentiality. With the unstructured format, it allowed Bridget to talk openly about certain aspects of her job and not feel obligated to answer question after question. I learned a great deal of information from the interview with Bridget. She is not the only residence hall director at the university. There are three other residence hall directors on campus and each one is assigned to their own hall. The hall in which the residence hall director is assigned becomes their responsibility. Bridget is responsible for the Centennial Hall. As a residence hall director, Bridget is responsible for enforcing the rules and policies of the university. These policies are necessary to ensure the safety of the staff and students. Bridget is directly responsible for supervising the R.A’s, or resident assistants. She directly is in charge of supervising four resident assistants and she co-supervises a total of twenty eight resident assistants. The resident assistants are responsible for assisting with housing related projects and issues. They take care of the needs of the students residing in their hall and dormitory. Any issue a student has with their living conditions or problems with another student, they will talk to the resident assistant who then will report to Bridget. Bridget is considered to be a live-in position at the university. This means that she actually resides in a dorm room inside of the hall which she is responsible for. This makes it much easier to maintain the daily operations of the building and ensure a productive environment for the students when they need help or have issues that need to be resolved. Bridget and her resident assistants are in charge of helping over a hundred and fifteen students in the Centennial Hall. There is more to Bridget’s job then just living inside a dorm room and helping students when they have concerns. She also works inside an actual office inside of a rented house close to campus referred to as “Res Life.” The three other residence hall directors work inside the same house and they each have their own office. The residence hall directors do not