8 Types of Residents Every Resident Advisor (RA) Has

By Melody Chi on May 13, 2015

During my college career, I was a Resident Advisor (RA) for one year. This means I lived in a dormitory with 70+ first-year residents and helped them with a variety of college-related issues throughout the year.

That resume-like spiel may make the job seem a bit dry, but I can honestly say it was one of the best college experiences I had. I really liked (and still like) my residents!

Image via Rhl.org

So I hope nobody takes this personally when I say that by the end of the year, I had become a pro at classifying most first-year residents I encountered into categories I had named and detailed in my mind.

Seems a little far-fetched? Well, read on and see if you agree with the resident groups I fashioned!

1.) The Partier

It seems like the media portrays every college student as this type of resident.

Yes, you know what I’m talking about: the one who goes just a little wild when they reach the freedom of college. They attend parties, experiment with drinking, check out all the best suggested late night hot spots, and then stumble home to do it all again the next night.

Several of my residents were what I would call Partiers, but that didn’t make me like them any less! Instead, they were the ones who just needed to let loose a little bit and then usually reeled themselves back in.

2.) The Shy Guy/Gal

I think everyone can relate to this resident. After all, when you go to college, you’re most likely away from home for the first time, on top of not having your trusty group of high school friends with you. That’s enough to make even the bravest soul hesitate a little bit!

However, this shy resident hangs back a little more than average, mostly because they don’t know where to start making headway into their new college world.

To help the Shy Guy/Gal out, a Resident Advisor can gently rope them into dormitory activities or suggest campus activities/events that might peak this resident’s interest and curiosity.

3.) The Homesick One

Like the Shy Guy/Gal, the Homesick resident is a common one. It’s reasonable to miss everything you used to call home up until the end of high school. From your family to friends to familiar hometown and hang-outs, everything is far away!

But that doesn’t mean that the Homesick resident can’t fit in and have a great time at college. They just have to figure out what makes their university and college town unique and worth staying for.

4.) The Adventurer

This type of resident is a confident person who’s ready and excited for the new experiences they know college will bring.

As somewhat of a contrast to the Shy Guy/Gal resident, pairing them up as roommates often has a positive result; the Shy Guy/Gal gains a friend to explore campus and college life with, while the Adventurer gets someone to reel in their unbounded desire to discover everything at once.

The Adventurer is also a pleasure to have in icebreaking activities that Resident Advisors organize because they volunteer first for everything, helping to get the ball rolling on further resident participation.

5.) The Bonder

Image via Unr.edu

Like the Adventurer, this resident greatly helps out the dorm and the Resident Advisor. They do this by bringing everyone together of their own volition, such as by organizing group outings like dining hall excursions for the whole dormitory.

Or, for example, some of my resident Bonders organized video game tournaments in the dorm, which was a great way to encourage the players to visit one another’s rooms and socialize.

I greatly appreciated the Bonders in my group—I sure wouldn’t have had such a close group of residents without them—and they definitely made everyone’s first-year experiences and friendships that much happier.

6.) The Rulebreaker

Image via globeslcc.com

This one is somewhat similar to the Partier, but on a more extreme level.

And although this article is about the types of residents supposedly every RA has, I’m going to provide a truthful disclaimer here and say that the inspiration for this one didn’t come from my own group (which was fortunately well-mannered overall), but from a Resident Advisor friend’s more mischievous group of residents.

As is probably obvious, the Rulebreaker is the type of resident who determinedly crosses the lines when it comes to the guidelines RAs have to enforce to make sure everyone lives in harmony in the dorms. Obviously, this type of resident is one of an RA’s least favorite simply because of the work they make for the RA and the trouble they cause for other residents.

However, a Rulebreaker is also sometimes beneficial. How, you ask? Often, a Rulebreaker makes it easy for an RA to demonstrate the consequences of violating the dorm laws, which can actually make for a more harmonious environment once the residents understand how things work.

7.) The Academic

This might seem redundant, because learning is the main goal of college, right? At least, the Academic definitely thinks so!

This type of resident is thoroughly dedicated to their studies, and maybe even loads up their schedule from the get-go to cram in as much educational time as possible.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that—I’ll admit that I was more than a little bit of an Academic my first year—but sometimes this resident needs to take an extended study break and hang out with some of their dorm friends. Luckily, RAs organize events for this specific purpose year-round!

One of the best things about the Academic is that they’re usually willing to tutor their fellow residents simply out of kindness. Also, they tend to take advantage of the resources most colleges offer (such as free tutoring or essay editing), which made this RA jump for joy!

8.) The Room Crasher

Again, this last type of resident probably seems familiar to a lot of people.

Basically, the Room Crasher is a person who isn’t a resident in a certain dorm but crashes in a resident friend’s room so often that they might as well be. I’ll freely admit that I saw a handful of people who weren’t my residents so often throughout the year that I basically adopted them into my dorm anyway!

Which is not to say that the Room Crasher is unwelcome at all. In fact, as long as the Room Crasher follows the dorm rules and is allowed by their resident friend’s roommate, it’s a case of ‘the more, the merrier’ in my opinion!

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