Frustrations

Mood: Content

If your life was made into a Hollywood, who would you want to play you and why: Alicia Silverstone because she is an animal rights activitist and overall a pretty good role model for a Hollywood star (e.g. she refused to lose weight even though people were criticizing her weight...when really she looked just fine). OR if it was a musical, it'd have to Hilary Duff just because I like her and she can sing.



I'm sitting on my couch, watching TV (A Cinderella Story with Hilary Duff), working on a bulletin board, downloading music (legally, of course) and updating this blog. Oh and I'm also making dinner (vegan nuggets and fries). If that isn't multi-tasking, I don't know what is. :)

Here's one of my goals for this semester: Learn how to better manage frustration. I have a tendency to let frustration get to me...and then I'm all mad and annoyed and it just drags me down. And in the long run, all this being mad and worrying doesn't help. So I want to learn how to accept the frustrations of life, try to fix them but not let them bother me.

I'm not doing so well...but somehow, I've been upset and frustrated all week...but somehow today I've managed to just kind of put all those negative thoughts aside and I'm feeling pretty content.

But let me tell you all about my frustrations:
First there were the Community Council elections. My two graduate assistants (one advises the Community Council in our building, the other one has taken on the council in another building) had to deal with all that drama but as their supervisor, I felt their frustration. So this Central Staff member offered to help with putting the elections online...they were just supposed to send him the info the day before elections. They did and then the day of election comes and there's no online elections, no e-mail sent out to residents, no information for us on what's going on. Residents are knocking on all of our doors asking what's going on. Remember, I am in the CHANGE - Emerging Community Leaders - Living Learning Community...so at least some of my residents are taking these council elections really serious.
Well, the grads and I decided we'd just figure out this online election thing ourselves. So the grads set up those elections, e-mail our residents and extend the deadline for one day. That day, Thursday (one day after elections were supposed to happen) at 4:30 PM (our elections ended at 5 PM) a second e-mail comes out with a link to vote in elections and a new deadline (Friday) AND it looks like the e-mail is coming from my grad's e-mail address. Turns out, our central staff member did finally get around to setting up those elections and just sent them out without checking in with us...a day and a half late.
You can imagine the confusion amongst residents. Both of my grads sent out clarification e-mails in an attempt to save the situation. It worked alright for our building. It didn't work so well in the other building and there had to be a re-count and lots more e-mails. My poor grad (she's a first-year and new to ResLife) had her first Academic Advising Workshop (workshops we do for each corridor, explaining some of the basics about academic advising to them) and one of the residents says, "Oh, you're the person who's been sending us those 120 e-mails." What a great way to start the semester and her career in ResLife for her! (*sarcasm*)

And there was nothing I could do...other than listen to them vent and trying to help them save the situation from turning worse. But of course they were worried about looking like incompetent fools in front of the residents and there really wasn't much we could do to change that. Argh!!!
I mean, I appreciate the offer of the Central Staff member to help with online elections. But if you won't have time to do them, then don't volunteer! Or if something comes up and you can't get them done, at least send us an e-mail saying, "Hey, sorry, they'll be up tomorrow." And do NOT send e-mails from our e-mail address (I still don't know how he managed to do that).

Still trying to get over that frustration, I'm sitting in my office on Friday afternoon, when I get an e-mail around 4:30 PM about Senator Training (one of the positions on our councils). And guess what the e-mail stated? Senator Training is TODAY at 5 PM or there's a section session tomorrow. Wow, we get a whole 30 minute notice...wasn't that nice. So there we go again...my grad's trying to hunt down the student praying that he'll be free at 5. Fortunately he was. But how professional does that make us look when we tell him about training half an hour before it starts?

Of course everyone else was to blame. And I'm not saying it's the RHA's Advisor's fault. But it's one of those things you can predict as an advisor (apparently they knew the date, just not the specific time and location...and supposedly that information was in the packets handed out by RHA members to students at Info sessions - info sessions nobody attended by the way since we all had our own info sessions because we weren't told until last minute when the RHA one's would be....but this vital information wasn't in the Elections Packets e-mailed to advisors, which were the ones we, of course, used). I know that when you work with student organization, you have to find a balance between stepping in and "saving" them and letting them fail and learn from those experiences. But when all of your advisory staff and the success of 36 student organizations depend on something getting done on time, you need to be a little more hands-on as an advisor. Otherwise, you're just setting us all up for failure. And it's not like it'll be RHA's fault when Community Councils aren't working out. No, it'll be the fault of the advisors.

WHAT A MESS!!!

And what makes this even more frustrating for me is that I worked with RHA last year. I went through that whole process. And my co-advisor and I came up with all these things we wanted to make sure happened this summer and mistakes from the past that we wanted to avoid. And what happened to all that work? Nothing. It's like we're repeating all the mistakes from the past. Okay, maybe it's not that bad...there's some things the students have improved on their own. But there's just a lot more that the advisors could have been doing to support them and make this a truly successful year. And once they're off to the right start, they could step back and let them figure out things on their own.
I'm not advocating for doing their work for them. But maybe guiding them to set earlier deadlines, so when things don't get done, you can still work with them to fix it.

Okay, I'm gonna be really really honest here...part of this frustration is that I'm torn. Half of me wants RHA to succeed this year (because I love those students...I know how much they want this and how much RHA means to them...and they're fabulous...they just need a little guidance and support) and then the other half wants them to fail miserable. Because it would serve the department right for not giving RHA to me.

*Shrug* Like I said, I need to learn to better manage my frustrations. So let's not think about RHA right now but get back to work on this exciting Saturday night (yeah, so much for balance...I worked today and I have to work tomorrow...and not by choice or any slacking/procrastinating on my part). *Deep breath*
It'll be alright!