By Molly Murray
Stop me if this sounds familiar. “Why do I have to go to training again? I’ve been an RA for years and I’ve already sat through all of this.” You’re not wrong. Attending RA training as a returner can feel like watching a rerun of a TV show. But hear me out, training isn’t repetition, it’s reinforcement.
Do you think that once a football team wins the Super Bowl, they never have to run drills again? If a pianist masters Stravinsky’s Trois mouvements de Petrouchka, do they never practice their scales? Knowing how something works and understanding the mechanics behind it is not the same as executing it consistently. As much of a cliché as “practice makes perfect” sounds, there’s a truth to it. Skills fade without regular practice and engagement.
When I look at the data from my new and returning RAs, the performance errors that we see – incomplete incident reports, missed deadlines, lopsided bulletin boards, misquoting policies – don’t show a noticeable difference between whether an RA has attended one or four trainings. These aren’t character flaws or signs of a “bad RA,” but they are areas that can be addressed through training and engaging with the material. The difference we see is between the RAs that show up to those trainings to learn, regardless of experience, and those that show up and check out because they’ve “heard it before.”
One piece of advice for returning RAs is to show up to training with a Fresh Eyes Mindset. How do you do this? Let’s break it down into some simple steps you can use to challenge yourself. As a returner, the emphasis will be less on learning new information and more on learning in a new way.
- Assume there’s something you missed the first time. Try to find facts that you didn’t know, even on topics you’ve heard before.
- Something always changes from year to year. Policies, staffing, expectations, and more shift each year. Consider it your very own “spot the difference” game.
- Dig deeper and find the “why” behind policies. When you’re confident in what the policies are and what your role is in enforcing them, get curious about why they exist.
- Reflect on how you can grow from last year. Where did you struggle? Where did you rely on others to explain things? What areas do you want to learn more about?
- Lead by example by modeling engagement for your new staff to signal that the content does matter.
You have a very important advantage as a returning RA: you know what you don’t know. Use this as your superpower because training only becomes more valuable when you’ve put the skills into practice and can focus on the nuances, patterns, strengths, and shortcomings you’ve experienced firsthand.
So here’s your challenge: approach training with a Fresh Eyes Mindset. Engaging with the material doesn’t make you look inexperienced, it makes you look like a leader. Being a returner doesn’t mean that you’re an expert or you have nothing left to learn. It means that your priority is maintaining and strengthening your foundation of knowledge. Run your drills, practice your scales, keep learning.
