A quick and essential disclaimer to start: I have never been one to believe in perfect work/life balance. Or at least not what many folx see as that perfect balance - complete segmentation and no crossing of boundaries between apportioned “work time” and “life time.” Maybe it’s because I am the child of secondary school... Continue Reading →
Up Your Spreadsheet Game as a Residence Life Pro
As Residence Life staff, we are often (digitally) swimming in data. We receive and analyze data related to students, rooms, incidents, programs, duty, inspections, and more. And while many wonderful software companies have made storing and reporting on these data much easier over time - and many of us work with awesome colleagues who can... Continue Reading →
Five Tips For Making Residence Hall Move-In A Moment of Learning
For many of us in on-campus housing, we plan for it the entire year - Move-In. It’s become the main event, and that’s understandable: it’s our first impression, involves overlapping processes, and provides a rather intimate view of what we do and how we do it to every stakeholder imaginable. And because of all this,... Continue Reading →
“One Does Not Simply” Create a Residence Life Duty Schedule
As I hope this post’s title indicates, I love The Lord of the Rings universe. I also love duty and on-call work. While I always hope that students never experience crises, it’s important that we are able to be there and facilitate the community’s navigation through these impactful moments. I find on-call work an engaging... Continue Reading →
More than a Manual: Enhancing Duty Training in Residence Life
One of the many facets of our work in Residence Life is incident and crisis response. And unless you’re at a school where most, if not all, of this work is dedicated to a specialized incident response team, you may struggle to find an effective approach to training the on-call staff on this part of... Continue Reading →
To Vacation or Not to Vacation in Residence Life…Better Question: HOW to Vacation?
Let’s set the scene: Your supervisor asks when you’re next planning to take a vacation. Maybe they’re even encouraging you to do so. Your (at least internal) response: “Yeah, sure, in the summer.” If you’re like me, that may come from the stress of planning leave at any. other. time. There’s always something - a... Continue Reading →



