Flashback Weekend

Sitting in an ASU van on my way home from Dallas, I can't help but feel like ASU wasted a lot of money letting all of us go on this trip. It was a Resident Assistant Conference hosted at UT Dallas and it was like reliving my junior high StuCo days. We stayed at the Radisson, but it wasn't even a nice one as far as Radissons go.

At least everyone else in our group had the same sense of humor I did, and the same idea about the conference. We got stuck in traffic for a little while on I-20 so we all started thinking "Man, if we're stuck like this we're not going to make it there for role call..." This ideas looked better and better as we thought about it more, so our advisor (who happens to be the Assistant Director of Residence Life) said we wouldn't go to the role call and we'll just go to dinner after we check into the hotel. Thank God for that because if we had gone to the campus that night, it would've made my experience that much worse.

To sum up the entire conference, it was just a Mecca for over-enthusiastic, overly-friendly, annoyingly perky, excessively peppy people. It was like being surrounded by clones of that person in high school who was so excited about everything, involved in everything, and made it a mission to know everybody! You never wanted to hate that person, but you eventually did because you couldn't take it. It wasn't like there were only a few schools like that either, it was everyone! I really don't know how those people function as RA's, I mean, how do their residents not want to kill them? I honestly don't know what they are going to do when they get out of college. Can they really get assimilated into the "real world?" How are they going to function in society when they can't scream "Texas State rocks! GO CATS!" for anything.

Yo give some school some credit, UNT was not-annoyingly enthusiastic and UT Pan American RAs were pretty cool. I think the highlight of the weekend was the final banquet. We walked in together and found an empty table, which happened to be surrounded by the 70 UNT RA's that were there. Most of the other schools walked in either chanting or singing their fight song. UNT started singing their school song, followed by calling other schools out to do the "Shake your booty" song. Thank goodness we were among them because we got skipped the first time around. Travis kept saying we should go before they got back around to us, but we really couldn't just leave. I was confident that they would just forget about us and leave us alone because we were so small, but no, we did get it. The three boys who ate lech with us screamed "Hey San Angelo!" and 70 green wearing UNTers turned our way and made us do the "Shake your booty" song. It wasn't so bad, but still just wanted to leave. Travis happened to be in the bathroom at the time we were called out, so we informed some UNTers to call him out on his own at the end. After the ceremony was over, they did just that and it was awesome. We got it on a video phone, so we have it documented for blackmailing.

So after the banquet, Angelo State University retreated back to the hotel to watch football, Blazing Saddles, and took quiz es to see what super hero we were (I'm 89% Supergirl and 85% Super Man, with 79% Green Lantern, by the way.) It was nice just hanging out in the hotel room together. The door between the men's and women's room was open most of the time, with the exception of when we were changing or taking showers. The thing is, ASU RA's can still be cohesive group without being annoyingly enthusiastic about it. Stuart prides himself on hiring RA's than can function normally in society post higher education. I like my job and I like most of the people I work with. I can even sit in a van for 10 hours an not be annoyed with any of them. That's pretty darn good!

I am very glad this weekend is over now. On to another stressful week of school. Oh yeah, I turn 21 next week. Hmm... more about my feelings on that later. Or maybe not.