My happy days

Hi all...
I just read all the posts for the last few days and it made me want to post about what I do in my daily life! I'm not sure I ever have before, so I'm sure you all wonder about it - probably at least a few hours of each day. So, I can't have that!

The only thing that is routine about my week is that I am generally in my office at 10am and I generally leave at 5pm. What I do in those 7 hours (lunch is often with my co-workers and students...so I rarely see it as not work) varies greatly day to day. Oh, if anyone forgot, I work as an Area Coordinator in Residence Life at Willamette University. So Monday and Wednesday mornings I have set meetings from 10-12 with the other administrative staff...Mondays to discuss the past week's incidents (reports from RAs, Campus Safety, or other events that needed discussion). At that meeting, we decide whether each one should be handled by an Area Coordinator, Marilyn (the director of Res Life), or one of the student-chaired Judicial boards. The majority are going to the J-boards now, which is good.

Wednesday meetings are mostly business oriented conversations with the other ACs and Bernie (our supervisor). We talk about stuff relating to our staffs, projects we're working on, etc. We also generally check in with each other about how we're emotionally doing. I had a pretty intense one this Wednesday because I was feeling frustrated with some of the things my co-workers were doing, and it was hard to stand up for what I thought they wouldn't like to hear.

Monday late afternoon (some time between 4 and 6) is when the judicial board that I advise meets. This past week was the first week of me actually advising...we hadn't planned to switch that over until next year, but Marilyn was pretty bogged down, so we switched it way early - I hope I'm ready!

Eleven of the hours of my week are blocked off for one-on-one meetings with my RAs (9) and Hall Council presidents (2)...sometimes they don't take the whole hour, but often they do, so I can't schedule things to overlap those times. I also have a one-on-one meeting with Bernie.

I also have to find times to meet with students for judicial hearings that I am dealing with individually. Aside from all my daily meetings, there are millions of things I need to send out emails about and work on paperwork for, as well as still being social with the 30 or so RAs who are often coming in and out of our offices...plopping down on the couches and expecting that we don't have work we're actually doing.

Then we get to the night time. Regular meetings - Monday nights from 9-11 is my RA staff meeting, Tuesday nights from 8:30-9:30 is my Doney Hall Council meeting, Thursday nights from 9:00-10:00 is my Lausanne Hall Council meeting. This week, however (as often happens), I am helping my RAs with their in-house lottery processes on Sunday night from 8-9pm, Tuesday night is an RA inservice from 7pm-9pm (so I miss much of Doney HC), and Wednesday night from 9-10pm is Lausanne's in-house lottery.

This Monday will be crazy because the missionaries are coming over for dinner, which I have reminded myself of every day, but then when I scheduled a J-board hearing from 5pm, I promptly had forgotten about it. So, I think we're going to order them pizza. They'll survive. Or Nathan could make them "sexy joes" but I'm not sure he's up for that.

Oh Tuesday and Thursday mornings Nathan and I have Institute from 9-10am. Somewhere else in the week, I need to fit in Visiting Teaching, FHE, daily studying the scriptures, trying to stay in touch with family and friends...I'm not very successful at accomplishing everything.
I probably should go, because I need to go get ready for a formal dinner that Lausanne and Doney Hall Councils are putting on...but basically everyone dropped the ball for, so I had to get everything figured out with catering, print and put up all over the posters, etc. I'm not sure many people are going to come help set up, so yeah - that's on my plate (haha literally) for tonight. There are about 50 people coming, so that will be cool! Much better than the 100 we have room for...some students were disappointed about the small number, but it will be much less expensive, and much better in terms of mingling and noise level.

Sorry this was long...and I'm very sorry I don't post on the blog more often...I really like reading it and hope you all are doing well. We pray for you and miss you and love to hear about new and exciting adventures and blessings and struggles and the reunion and everything.

Thanks for reading!

Love you all,
Mandapandapalmer