Get to Know the Area Bulletin Board

Bloomington-Normal is the typical college town. When the bulk of students leave campus for breaks, it's hard to find things to do. As a Resident Assistant, I chose to provide information about my favorite places in town to share with my residents. I took a poll to see what some popular locations would be and made my list from there. I felt it was important to offer a variety of locations: walking vs driving distance, food vs entertainment, cost vs free, etc. In total I have about 8 but there were more that I could have added - I just ran out of space. :)

In the design of these information sheets, I included the following:
A Map with directions
Step by step directions
Photo images of the location or the company logo
Bullet point highlights of the location

Here's a screen shot of an example:

Until next time,
Katie

Community Poem

If you didn't already know, April is National Poetry Month.  My first April as an RA, I put together a bunch of passive programs that went along with poetry as a theme.

Oh hey, community poem!

So maybe by the time April rolls around, you're not feeling particularly poetic, but your residents might!  It's really easy to put together a response board like this, but I would recommend watching it because you don't know if something offensive might show up.

All you have to do is post a blank sheet of butcher block, label it a "Community Poem" and invite the residents to add a line as they choose!  Simple as that!  Oh, and don't forget to write your own additions every now and again!

Cheers,
Brianna

Jackson Pollack

For my very first door decs (door decorations, name tags, whatever you call them) for my first year residents, I made them Jackson Pollack inspired tags.

Thanks for the idea, Pollack!

Materials:
-  poster board
-  ruler
-  scissors
-  LOTS of paint in many colors
-  paintbrushes (of varying sizes)
-  clothes you don't care about
-  paint markers

Jackson Pollack was famous for not just splatter painting but also dripping a mess of paint all over his canvas, so tap into your inner Pollack...

Instructions:
1.  Lay out your poster board on top of a paint tarp (I used an old shower curtain).
2.  Put on some really great painting music.
3.  Have at ye.  Be careful when you're flicking paint around, because it gets in places you never would have thought...like the walls of the garage..or the garage floor, if that's where you happen to be painting.  Also don't hurt yourself with vigorously flicking paint at the poster board.
4.  If you add a little bit of water, you get different amounts and levels of splatter, so play with that.
5.  Let your masterpiece dry.
6.  Cut to size the door decs you want.
7.  Paint marker some names on, and voila!

I would suggest getting a thicker paint marker than I had, because it got a little difficult to see everyone's names on some of the splatters.  You could also probably play around with cut out letters.  I also used black poster board for half of the door decs, and it could be really fun splatter painting with neon colors on black.

This could also be great fun for a program.  Give everyone a pre-cut door dec shape, and have everyone Jackson Pollack their own door dec.  Just keep in mind that you'll want to do this craft project outside, probably some time in spring or at the beginning of the year when it's still warm.

Cheers,
Brianna

I'll Do It Tomorrow...

When I was a First Year Resident Advisor (FYRA), I learned that a bunch of my residents identified themselves as having difficulties with procrastination.  What was funny to me was that I also have issues with procrastination.  So in order to procrastinate my homework, I made this bulletin board about procrastination.

Just to make sure that everyone knows what's going on, if you see a bulletin board from me, you'll notice that the backgrounds are usually newspaper.  I used newspaper for my backgrounds because it was a sustainable way of using the school papers or the neighborhood papers that ended up recycled anyway and also because we used to get extra points for being sustainable in the completion of our bulletin boards.  Oh, and because it was easier for me to color coordinate the rest of my board if the background was black and white.

"I'll Do It Tomorrow..."

Materials and Resources:
-  die cut letters for the title
-  colored paper for the backgrounds
-  Google for the information
-  scissors
-  stapler and staples
-  optional: fun fonts (for this one I used Happy Phantom)

The definition of procrastination which you'll see to the right of the title.

Each of the four larger sheets of paper bordered in purple are information that I found by creative Google use.

Why Do I Procrastinate?

Four Sections:
-  Do I Procrastinate Too Much?  --  if the reader agrees with 5 or more of the 12 statements on this list, the reader procrastinates excessively
-  Why Do I Procrastinate?  --  a list of the 8 most common reasons for procrastination
-  How Can I Stop Procrastinating?  --  15 tips for kicking procrastination
-  Procrastination Rationalizations  --  10 arguments a procrastinator needs to argue against to kick the habit

The fun stuff: cartoons

To make the information more interesting, I included cartoons that I found by creatively Google searching.  Not an exact science, though there are a couple places that you should be able to find a good amount of procrastination cartoons, PhD Comics should have quite a few.  I also used Pearls before Swine, a demotivational poster, and Hyperbole and a Half.

AND because I love quotes, I included a bunch of quotes about procrastination and deadlines, these are some of my favorites:

"I love deadlines.  Especially the whooshing sound they make as they pass by." - Douglas Adams

"Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week." - Spanish Proverb

"Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow." - Mark Twain

And there you have it, a really great bulletin board about procrastination that's really quite simple to put together.  Make it pretty, have some fun, and your residents will love it!

Cheers,
Brianna

Welcome!

Welcome to the Road Map to Residential Life!

It is our hope that this blog will serve as a resource for residential life staff as they create programs for their residents and learn about themselves and leadership.

We will be sharing:
-  personal stories, both humorous and serious
-  bulletin boards, ideas and examples of ones we've made
-  door decs (name tags, door decorations, whatever you call them)
-  response boards, ideas and ones we've made
-  active programs, ranging from sustainability education to emotional education
-  and more!

So here it is: the Road Map to Residential Life!  Enjoy!