ResEdChat Ep 95: How Stoicism & Residence Life Intersect with Sam Ferrigno

Dustin Ramsdell:
Welcome back, everyone to Roompact’s ResEdChat podcast. If you’re new to the show, every episode we feature a variety of topics of interest to higher ed professionals who work in and with university housing, Residence Life, residential education, whatever we might call it. All are welcome here. So we have a very interesting topic today talking about Stoicism and how it relates to the Residence Life experience. I’d say maybe speaking a little bit more from the staff perspective, but I’m sure student experience will weave in here a little bit as well. But I’m excited for this.
It stuck out to me, we reached out, as we always do every year, bringing on the blog cohorts that has been writing. I’ve been following along on the Roompact blog. So this is just an opportunity to get to know them a little bit better in a little bit of different format and sort of add to that thought leadership that they’re adding to the field here. So we’ll start as we always do, but our guest is a rare return guest to ResEdChat. So Sam, why don’t you reintroduce yourself to everyone and give a brief overview of your professional background, I guess the updates since you were last on.

Sam Ferrigno:
Yeah, absolutely. So, hi, everyone. My name is Sam Ferrigno. I use she/her pronouns and my current role, I’m working at George Mason University as their coordinator for RSDI, which stands for Residential Student Development Initiatives. All to say I work a lot with our in-house residential curriculum as well as the student staff training process and the student staff selection process. Last we spoke, I think I was working at University of Maryland Baltimore County, where I was in the traditional community director role there. So the change kind of came from the work that I did at UMBC. I got to work a lot with the curriculum there and I found it to be a really big area of passion for me. It was something that I really looked forward to going to those committee meetings every week and taking student feedback and kind of crafting the most impactful residential experience I could. So I started looking for jobs that would let me move more in that direction. And here I am at GMU. So yeah, I’m happy to be back.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, yeah. We recorded back in March of 2023, and I’m hoping as we’re keeping the show going and more consistent, we’ll have more opportunities of return guests and everything, because I think obviously there’s obviously no shortage of great people out there to talk to about interesting stuff. But it’s also like the folks who are cool to talk to, and you have a very unique perspective I remember just from that previous conversation, and that’s kind of a through line to what we’re talking about here, Stoicism.
But before we get to that, because as we’re recording this, this is October of 2024, you’ve been writing on the Roompact blog for this past calendar year. Could you just explain a little bit about your experience being a writer, and I guess obviously we’re talking a bit about one of the things that you have written about, but if you just want to give a tip of the hat to the other things that you’ve written about this year so far? Yeah, just talk to us about your experience being a writer.

Sam Ferrigno:
Yeah, sure. So I think there’s a strong theme to a lot of my posts, not all of them, but this is my sixth or seventh full year as a professional in an entry level position. So I think I see myself on the tail end of being at the entry level, having gone through a lot of different things at a couple of different institutions, gained a lot of knowledge along the way, and hoping that a lot of what I write is helpful to newer entry level professionals. So those hard lessons that I had to learn, hopefully instead they can read a blog post and learn those lessons a little bit faster than I did.
So I’ve written about using your pro devo funds, I think that was my most recent post that we just posted today I think. I’ve written about AI. I think technology is also an area of interest for me, although there’s a lot of writing out there about a lot of technology in higher education. So I kind of want to look at something new, especially because I find myself using AI, I see a lot of my co-workers using AI to do a lot of the work that we do and kind of figuring out, at least within the higher education perspective, what is ethical? How do we use this in ways that is helpful and not harmful to ourselves, to the work that we do, to the students that we’re working for, working with?
And then another post I guess that I’ll highlight is I did a little two series curriculum post to remind people that the curricular approach is something that can be really fun. I think a lot of times we get really in our heads. And curriculum, again, is a passion of mine. So of course I’m convincing everyone that it’s the best thing in the world. But I think what I’ve seen at a lot of schools is the curricular approach can be seen as extra work that we do, or just making things harder by changing everything from year to year. But looking at the long-term goal of this is a fun and different way to engage with our students. They can learn some life skills, they can learn some lessons. Again, learning them the easy way instead of the hard way, and have fun while doing that learning.

Dustin Ramsdell:
And I think that experience of being a writer and having to write about something in some set frequency, that idea of, yeah, you’re living and breathing the curricular approach on a day to day, and I don’t know how maybe the epiphany came to you, but that idea of it feels like this has become too dry or too self-serious or whatever. It’s fun. It should be something that feels enjoyable. And even, I guess, that idea of, all right, obviously you wrote about it in that way, but even just I’m sure people can make the acknowledgement of like, okay, maybe fun doesn’t strike you the right way, but this should not be painstaking, miserable, whatever kind of work. You should at least be taking solace or pleasure in the idea of continuous improvement in trying to strive towards, like you’re saying, always trying to take the feedback and create a better experience in the halls and everything.
So yeah, so I think the fun experience I guess of being a writer is sometimes forcing yourself to stretch and look at something from a different perspective and also coherently bring together concepts and connect dots and different things. So I think in that vein, I guess I’m curious, part of the genesis of how this topic came up, but Stoicism and relating it to Residence Life work. So we’ll spend some time here. We’ll start off though, if you could explain the concept of Stoicism in case folks aren’t familiar with it, and just the initial sort of way that you apply it to your work.

Sam Ferrigno:
Yeah, sure. So Stoicism is an ancient philosophy, a school of philosophy. It originated in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, and it really focuses on certain principles and virtues and essentially, I mean, life was a lot more simple back then, but the Stoics believed that if you followed these four certain virtues of wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice, that everything will kind of just fall into place. You are doing what is right, doing what you believe is true, while also realizing that everything exists in moderation, which comes into that temperance piece. And I think when they speak about temperance, it’s a lot about managing our own resources and emotions. The work that we do can be very emotional, especially for people who work more directly with students who work on call. I do still serve in an on call rotation in my current role. So I think that’s kind of what led me to seek something out outside of just our student development theory that we learn about in school. What are ways that I as a professional can better manage crisis, can better help manage students’ expectations?
So I think that that’s mostly what Stoicism is about. They’ve got a lot of great one-liners, great quotes. So if you’ve ever heard, “Memento mori,” which means, “Remember you will die.” So it sounds kind of dark, but it’s just a remembrance that we’re supposed to live full, whole lives and also that we’re not immortal, don’t do anything too crazy, and, “Amor fati,” which is, “Love of fate.” So looking at life as everything that happens in your life is a good thing, or even if it isn’t a good thing, having a positive perspective on what is happening in your life. Because you don’t really have any other choice. What’s going to happen is going to happen. And you can control so little of what’s around you. Really you can only control what you’ve got going on in your own head. So you have no choice other than to accept and to love the life that you are living.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, like I said, we’ll spend a little time here to elaborate on this, but it makes me think of this quote that I heard randomly on a podcast that I always listen to. I listen to a lot of podcasts myself as well. And the idea of, something that you said that made me think of it was the quote being with things that happened to you, it’s all grist for the mill. It’s all fuel for the fire. It all sort of is part of the journey. It’s part of your story. And that idea of trying to make the most of circumstance and understand moderation and all those kind of things, it’s like keep pressing onward, keep moving forward and try to take challenges and opportunities. Because I would never, as much as I’m aware of Stoicism, I would never describe as like a inherently optimistic point of view, but it’s at least just that idea of perseverance and those sort of things. The idea of whatever adversity you encounter, it’s part of the journey, it’s part of the story, it’s part of what can shape you and all of that.
And I think being a very equalizing kind of philosophy, that idea of, like, hey, we all kind of end up at the same place, so let’s try to make the most of it. And I think it’s certainly something that when I’ve encountered maybe those kind of stray quotes or anecdotes about Stoicism, I’ve found it to be something that resonates with me. And I think that’s also why this kind of resonated with me as a topic to talk about for the podcast episode. So I appreciate that you brought this perspective into the space. And I think if you can maybe I guess talk a little bit more about the idea of how you’re incorporating into your work. Do you see it showing up as much as how you’re working with your colleagues, as you’re working with your students and those sort of things? The idea that it has a pretty broad… Because I think you were mentioning kind offhand that, “Oh yeah, I’m on call and I’m dealing with a student, I should try to keep some of these mantras and things in mind as I’m doing that work.”

Sam Ferrigno:
If we had had this meeting a couple months ago, I’m fairly new to my role, so if you had asked these questions while I was a community director, I think the answers would differ a little bit more because I worked a lot with students. Community directors are meeting with students, whether they’re the RA’s, they’re students in crisis, students that have roommate conflicts, every single day. Whereas in my current role, it’s a lot less. I advise a student group and I meet with students here and there to talk about our curriculum, what’s going well, what’s not going well, that kind of stuff. So yeah, I think there’s three kind of areas where it’s helped me a lot and it’s work-life balance, coaching students, and managing relationships with co-workers.
So thinking about work-life balance, I think I am very pro work-life balance. Again, I think Stoicism teaches us to throw away what’s not important. There’s a lot of resources out there that use very harsh language of, “Toss the trash,” whatever’s not important to you as a person, treat it brutally. For me, for an example, I am a very anxious person. I reread emails 10 times before I send them, looking for every little typo looking for like, “Oh, is what I said going to be misinterpreted? Is it 1000% crystal clear?” And that wastes a lot of time, so I’m getting better at it.
But that’s one of those things, is someone going to notice that there’s a typo in my email? Maybe. Is it going to matter at the end of the day? Probably not. It’s just an email. I would rather think about the life that I’m building with my partner outside of work. So focusing less on those things that don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. Because again, memento mori, remember you’re going to die one day, you’re not going to be on your deathbed thinking about that typo in that email. You’re going to be thinking about all the wonderful things you did with your life.
So the second thing that I had said was students, working with students. Again, that’s where more of the one-liners come in. I’ve had a lot of students in conflict with each other where they’re doing and saying really harmful things, and being able to kind of mix in restorative practices a little bit and ask restorative questions, “Are you living your values right now? What you said to that person? Do you want that to be what you’re remembered for? Would you say that in another context? Is this the kind of person that you want to become?” And a specific example might be, I’ve had students that want to go into the healthcare industry and they’re threatening physical harm on someone else. And, “”Where are our values? What values do you have that brought you to wanting to work in healthcare? And how does that conflict with what you’re actually saying and doing right now?”
And I guess for maintaining relationships with coworkers, and this really hits harder at the CD level. I think most schools that I’ve worked at where there’s more than a handful of CDs, the administration, the department has really tried to craft a cohort model for community directors. This is a position that has a high turnover rate. So I think they’re looking to decrease that turnover rate by creating more community amongst your coworkers. If you’re investing in the people you work with, then you’re going to want to invest in the position that you have. And that’s a whole separate topic on its own of whether or not that is the way to go about making these positions more… Giving them more longevity.
But what it is is also I’ve seen a lot of coworkers get into conflicts with each other, where I find myself asking, “What is the actual conflict? What is going on?” Of course, I ask myself that almost every day, “What is going on?” But I think the quote that I’m trying to come to that really captures this the best is Seneca. He was probably one of the most famous Stoics. He was an advisor to Emperor Nero. But he had said something along the lines of, “We suffer more in imagination than in reality.” It’s one of my favorite quotes. But just speaking in modern times of how much we get in our heads about, “Oh my gosh, the way that person said that thing to me, do you think they dislike me?” You’re imagining, you don’t know for sure whether someone likes you or dislikes you truly until they say it to your face, “I do not like working with you.”
You can certainly put together whatever facts and experiences that you have, but truly you don’t know until they say it. So why create these stories in your head? It doesn’t matter if my coworkers don’t like me or not, especially if they’re not willing to tell me what problems they have with me. Yeah, so it’s just getting less in your head about everyday social interactions and seeing them for what they are. And if you’re concerned, have that hard conversation with a coworker. “Hey, I really didn’t like the way you said this to me. Can you tell me more about why you said it this way, or what your intentions were when you said that?”

Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, I think it’s just so… Because I think all the things that you’re talking about, a lot of different philosophies or whatever else would have you end up in a similar place. But I think this being really refreshing in how grounding it is, it’s trying to simplify, it feels very serene because it’s that idea of, yeah, we’re in our own head so much catastrophizing and all these different things and all that. It’s being much more present, being much more connected to what is actually going on, what’s actually causing people to behave in such a way and not hypothesizing based on a crumb of evidence of like, “Oh, maybe you don’t like me,” or something. It’s like, why would you think that?
Because I think there’s, I don’t even know where it originated from, but the idea of Occam’s razor or whatever, the simplest solution is probably the right one. And the idea is like, “Oh, they’re being such a jerk. Usually they’re not that way. What’s going on? Do they hate me or did I do something wrong?” Or whatever. It’s like they probably had a bad day, or I don’t know, they woke up, didn’t get good night’s sleep or something. So that being a simple thing versus I don’t think out of nowhere, after knowing you for several years, you did a thing that made them radically change their perception of you, and now they’re being an awful jerk and whatever else. And then you’re going to linger on that all day. And that’ll sort of… I don’t know. So it’s just very grounding, very present, very calming. These are all sort of verbs or feelings that I get, I guess, from just some of the things that you’re sharing.
And I think it is very important because, yeah, Residence Life work, and I kind of use this as sort of a setup for my next question, but this work is so inherently chaotic in the sense of it is just a lot of variables. It’s a lot of people that can be unpredictable or whatever else. So you need to be able to be nimble and flexible and adaptable and all these sort of things. But I think, it almost seems like kind of an oxymoron, but the idea of being very grounded and still will allow you to go with the flow versus… I guess it’s the idea of getting… Because if you’re too into your head, you’re maybe going to anticipate or get ahead of yourself and be jumpy or something, versus the stillness, the calmness, the clear perspective. I don’t know, yeah, and I think it’s interesting say too, where I do feel like it’s one of those philosophies where it’s like the quotes and the anecdote, those little mantras are as powerful as anything else, where it’s just like if you could meditate on those phrases and things, they could just be so powerful.
But I guess, can you talk a little bit more about that? Because obviously there’s going to be the interactions with students, there’s going to be the interactions with your colleagues, and appreciate how you’re sort of outlining some of the things there. But the idea of, I guess what I’m sort of juxtaposing there, that Stoicism can get you to a place of just being that much better equipped from the stillness and adaptability for the inherent unpredictable nature of just being in Residence Life. Is that something that you kind of feel as well?

Sam Ferrigno:
A lot of Stoic philosophy, if you read it at face value, you can say, “Wait, that doesn’t make sense. Five pages ago, you told me to do the opposite.” But yeah, I think there’s a lot to say about the Seneca quote about not existing in your head too much, but then there’s something that seems directly in opposition of that, which is preparing for the storm, right? Preparing for the storm while things are calm. And again, at face value, you might think you, “You’re just telling me to overthink. You’re telling me to think about all the things that could go wrong, and I don’t like that. I don’t want to do that. You just told me to do the opposite.”
But that is more about actual preparation, getting out of your head and being like, “Okay, well, I’m going to be on call in five days. I need to go get groceries. That’s an actionable thing I can do, so I don’t have to stress about what I’m going to be eating for the next week. Let me talk to my supervisor and see what’s been going on. Let me read the duty logs and see what’s been going on so I can see what have been the busy days, what have been the common issues, what have been the buildings that have been having the most problems.” So yeah, it definitely helps manage a lot of that chaos. But when I’m reading, because I have a book that I read every day, it’s like a one page a day kind of thing, when you’re reading, you really have to go a little bit deeper than the surface because otherwise there does seem to be a lot of contradictions in the book that I’m reading.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, I guess that’s part of it. And I guess that speaks a little bit too though, it prepares you to be in a place of adaptability in so much as you’re dealing with reality as it comes or just being very objective. Because I think the idea, from what you’re saying, that example of, “All right, I’m going to be on duty next week, that is a fact, that is coming up. I know how far away that is, I should prepare.” Versus getting in your head and being like, “Oh, I’m going to be on duty next week. It’s going to be awful. It’s going to be the worst week of my life. Everything’s going to go wrong. Nothing I do matters or can change that,” or whatever. And it’s like, you don’t know that. No one can know that. What you do know is you are on duty next week. That does mean that your time is going to be a little bit more sort of spoken for, whatever. You can objectively do things now to make that easier. End of sentence, whatever.
So that feels very much more grounded, very objective and very dealing with reality as it comes versus getting in your head and all that. And that allows you to deal with things as they come. Deal with that duty call as it comes up and you’re sort of walking in and kind of like, “All right, give me the facts. What’s going on? What are we dealing with here?” Versus, again, maybe being in your head and just being like, “These dumb students and blah, blah, blah,” whatever. And it’s like you’re just entering it. You haven’t even gotten any sort of insight as to what’s actually happening in this situation. Just kind of come to it and deal with the inputs as they arrive.
And I guess the other part of what I was processing out loud as I was presenting that question is the idea that Stoicism is important in this context because it stands in such a stark contrast to the inherent unpredictability of Residence Life. So it’s like, “Well, it’s that much more important.” This is something that I think anybody could be like, “Oh, that sounds so great. That would be really useful philosophy to have for life.” And it’s like, yeah, and if you work in Res Life, it’s that much more important because you just never really know what you’re going to be dealing with any given day in the halls and stuff. So I guess just that, I guess if you want, however that hits you, I guess, of Stoicism is that much more important in Residence Life because of the inherent unpredictable nature of the work?

Sam Ferrigno:
Yeah, I think the word that comes to mind is resilience. So that’s another component of Stoicism and another little one-liner is it’s okay to not have thoughts and opinions about things, especially negative things. Critics of Stoicism, I believe, would say that it’s an unrealistic philosophy because it coaches you to throw away your emotions, but that’s not true. I think Stoicism doesn’t always consider emotions because our society is very different from it was in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. So I think that our relationship with emotions has become a lot more complex, but it’s not about throwing away your emotions. It’s about maybe putting them aside for later, or again, temperance, managing your own emotions, which student development theory, our seven vectors of student development, we have to manage our emotions just like we expect our students to manage their emotions.
So while critics might say, again, it’s an emotionless philosophy, I would say it’s just a simple way of living. There are problems, there are solutions. If you have a problem and you don’t have a solution, maybe find one or accept that there is no solution. So I think it’s made me go about my work in a much simpler way, whereas at my previous position I was probably very vocal, the first person to raise their hand and be like, “I don’t think we should be doing that.” I do think it’s important to advocate for our students and ourselves, but a lot of times now I’m in a meeting and I go, “You know, I think I’ll give other people a chance to speak because I do know that other people feel the same way as I do, or maybe I don’t have an opinion of this,” especially during the election season, “I don’t have time to have an opinion on everything. I don’t have the bandwidth to have an opinion on everything, so I’m just going to be okay with not having an opinion on something that I probably can’t change.”

Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, I guess because what I’m thinking of is human beings are emotional animals. We’ll have a lot of knee-jerk things, and it feels very just simple in that way of just sort of whatever you feel, you feel it, you just direct it or whoever’s in front of you kind of thing. And the idea where it might feel like, “Well, that’s just sort of our inherent nature, right?” It’s like, yes, but trying to come at it with a Stoic point of view, obviously it’s just advocating for simplicity in its very nature. But the idea that the solution there or how to manage that is simple, one simple layer of moderation of just it’s not about not feeling, it’s about managing that feeling and maybe finding the right outlets for it and understanding that those feelings are there, but the idea that you don’t just have to spurt out every thought that comes into your head or just if somebody hits your foot while you’re walking, you have to be knee-jerk emotion or whatever.
It’s just sort of let that be. Where it could be, that’s annoying, yeah, I think all of us know that that’s annoying and all that. But what’s the best use of that? Or I don’t know. So it does feel like it’s sort of a simple layer, and that’s sometimes maybe where it’s sort of confusing or frustrating for people, or it’s just like, “No, it can’t be that simple, or it can’t be that easy. Our relationships with our emotions are so complex.” And it’s like, yes, but I think just a pretty thin firewall can sometimes go a pretty long way. We’re not just living as sort of these we raw nerves of emotion, whatever. So yeah, I think that’s a lot of interesting kind of reflections and anecdotes and some great quotes for sure.
But as we’re wrapping up, I mean, you did write on this topic for the Roompact blog, so we’ll obviously be directing folks to that. But I know you mentioned that book, I guess, if you want to give a shout out to that or any other resources. Because I feel like this one obviously might be one of the better episodes for folks to go do their homework on.

Sam Ferrigno:
Yeah, absolutely. So I would say, of all the research that I’ve done online, there’s one name that keeps coming up in modern Stoic philosophy, and that’s Ryan Holiday. He wrote the book that I just mentioned. It’s called The Daily Stoic. It’s a one line a day, so it’s like 366 pages, and you just read one page a day. And they have a regular version, which is what I have, but they also have a journal version. So if you don’t want to write in a regular book, you can write in the journal version of the book, like a morning, an evening reflection on what that passage was for the day. He’s got a podcast, he’s got a website, he’s got everything. And the reason it’s kind of hard to come by modern sources for a lot of this information is because not all of this stuff was written down, or it’s in a language that three people on this earth can translate, Ancient Greek or Latin, which if you’re a fan of Latin, I’m sure you could find some original texts and translate them yourselves.
But other than that, the primary sources, so the main three, I guess, stars of Stoicism back in the day were Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, who’s a Roman emperor, and again, Seneca, who was an advisor to a Roman emperor. So anything you can find with their name attached to it, specifically Marcus Aurelius wrote Meditations, which was actually kind of like his personal reflections on his life, all the personal lessons that he learned, and he was writing it to himself. It was never meant to be a book that was published. But it was helpful to a lot of people, so it’s made its way out into the world. It’s very short. I found YouTube videos where someone is narrating the whole thing, reading out the whole thing, and it’s like two hours long. So I think that that’s another, if you want a primary source, I would look up Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Awesome. Yeah, love it. A lot of great stuff there. And I think, yeah, I mean, it’s one of those things where, honestly… Again, this has always been something that resonates with me, that idea of repeated consistent reminders and having those moments to really sit with the quotes, the perspectives, all that. I guess many sort very philosophical groupings or whatever have that where it’s just like, oh, if you can just remember these quotes or put them onto your wall or something, it’s really, really powerful reminders and helping you just constantly see things and have to think about them or whatever. But yes, it feels especially relevant here for Stoicism, and definitely feels like a very relevant and useful tool for all of our Res Lifers out there. And appreciate you thinking about this and sharing this, and for your service to the Roompact community through being a writer over this past year. And we’ll have ways to connect with you, your writing on this topic and everything else that you’ve written in the show notes for the episode. So just really appreciate you and appreciate your time hanging out for this episode.

Sam Ferrigno:
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.