In Park hall, our first door decorations were cacti on the third floor, sloths on the second floor, and elephants on the first floor.
Everything on my blog takes place at the University of Maine at Presque Isle. Feel free to contact me with any questions, Alexandra.desruisseaux@maine.edu.
My first program of the fall semester was called “speed friending”. I think that freshman get very tired of introducing their name, major, where they are from, and other very surface level facts in large groups of people. This program was my way to allow them to form those deeper relationships with others and get to know people better.
Tables were set up and numbered before hand. Popsicle sticks were put in a cup and had numbers on them that coordinated with these varying tables. Residents first make themselves a nametag and then pick out a popsicle stick and sit at the table for a timed five minutes with another person who picked that number. They are told to have a discussion regarding the prompts left on their table. The prompts were separated by themes such as travel, food, pets, superheroes, our university, family, and hometown. Snacks were also set up on the tables for them to have while they were discussing.
One of the participants at the end noted how talking to new people isn’t as scary as she had thought, you just need to start conversation. Another set of boys when discussing their hometowns found out they grew up five minutes from one another and never knew. It was really amazing to unify both the introverts and the extroverts into one activity like this where they can begin to find common ground.
Everything on my blog takes place at the University of Maine at Presque Isle. Feel free to contact me with any questions, Alexandra.desruisseaux@maine.edu.
This year, I decided I wanted to motivate residents to attend programs that might not necessarily be as exciting as others. As RA’s, we are contracted to do eight programs per semester that must fulfill or educate on certain categories. Since there are three RA’s in our building, there will be a minimum of twenty four programs advertised to our freshman.
We as a building introduced the concept of “brownie points” to our residents. These are little cards (see PDF) that they will receive whenever they attend a program. At the end of the semester during finals week, they will be able to exchange these cards for real brownies! The resident with the most points will also receive a prize, most likely an amazon card. We expect that this will be a fun incentive and promote healthy competition among the residents.
Everything on my blog takes place at the University of Maine at Presque Isle. Feel free to contact me with any questions, Alexandra.desruisseaux@maine.edu.
For my bulletin board, I decided to go with an Alice in Wonderland theme. I painted the background with a few different types of regular paint and sparkly paint. Since my building is Park hall, my board says “Welcome To Park”. The characters were made by cutting out the pieces of paper and just drawing out the characters. This takes a long time so you could always print them out.
Everything on my blog takes place at the University of Maine at Presque Isle. Feel free to contact me with any questions, Alexandra.desruisseaux@maine.edu.
For this semesters alcohol awareness program, I ran an event that involved Mario kart on the Wii and beer goggles. A local police department let me borrow their set of six different beer goggles that all simulated blood alcohol content levels from 0.06 to 0.25. Residents attempted to play Mario kart with these varying goggles on to show that when you’re driving drunk, you won’t be a good driver.
For this program, we also made root beer floats. Since only one person was playing at a time, I thought that would be a way to pass time while everyone is just hanging out. An officer from our local police department was present for an hour answering questions about drunk driving in Maine and having students do various sobriety tests while wearing beer goggles. He was a really great resource and was able to answer student questions.
Everything on my blog takes place at the University of Maine at Presque Isle. Feel free to contact me with any questions, Alexandra.desruisseaux@maine.edu.
This program was my first program of the first semester. Residents were invited to make their own mini terrarium in a mason jar. First, I got two dozen little cacti/ succulents from a local greenhouse. I got ones that did not have any spikes since I knew they would be hard to plant. We planted them in large mason jars which can be pretty inexpensively bought in packs of a dozen. To plant, you first need a layer of rocks. Then, a little bit of moss. Then, some dirt. Lastly, plant the succulent. These grow easily and are almost impossible to kill. The measurements don’t have to be perfect, everyone did it a little differently. Throughout the year all of their plants have grown and so have they. This was a really fun way to start of the year and helped with making each resident’s room a little more cozy.
Everything on my blog takes place at the University of Maine at Presque Isle. Feel free to contact me with any questions, Alexandra.desruisseaux@maine.edu.
March is mid semester, and it can be a month that drags on. With this in mind, I collaborated with one of my coworkers, Brandon, to create a program that would boost excitement. This program took A LOT of prep work, but after everything was set up, it all fell into place. We ran a St. Patrick’s day themed scavenger hunt that ran for about a week and a half. We advertised like crazy with flyers in every building and inviting people through a Facebook group.
In our Facebook group, there was a post where people could signup their group ranging from 1 to 3 participants. We posted a riddle every morning which led to a different place on campus. When the team finds the item, they must message us a picture with the item and then leave it for the next group. Our goal in making these clues was to make them pretty easy, and judge teams based upon when they send it in. Since there were 10 teams, the 1st team to send it in that day gets 10 points, the 2nd team gets 9 points etc. We had them message their picture to the Facebook page and would keep track in a spreadsheet of when groups sent them in.
Here are some examples of clues we used:
To end the program, we had a pizza party where we invited everyone who participated. Each participant got a little prize (a little rubber duck with four leaf clover and a green necklace). We then had some props and put up a green background to all take photos and hang out for a while. It was a nice end to the program. We made certificates for the top three teams and printed it on nice card stock paper. The members of the winning team got a $15 amazon card each. Here are a few of the many photo submissions we received:
Overall, this was a great program and got a lot of people excited and involved during what is usually a slow part of the year.
Everything on my blog takes place at the University of Maine at Presque Isle. Feel free to contact me with any questions, Alexandra.desruisseaux@maine.edu.
For this month, I made a bulletin board titled “Pills and Potions”. It includes the measurements of what qualifies as a drink, risk factors that can affect how alcohol is in your system, and the three most common “date rape” drugs under the category roofies. Although the most common is Rohypnol, I included some information about identifying the three most common as a reference for residents. This will lead into my upcoming alcohol awareness program later this month.
Everything on my blog takes place at the University of Maine at Presque Isle. Feel free to contact me with any questions, Alexandra.desruisseaux@maine.edu.
This program was a great way to start off the fall semester and enjoy the sunshine. This was an alcohol awareness program and showed residents that you can have fun without alcohol. To set up, We had two inflatable kiddie pools blown up and filled with water. One is all you need, but we had two so that we could have multiple games going at once. The line in the middle of the pools was made with duct tape. I made the boats myself using a foam sheet (can be bought at any craft store or WalMart). Each side had a large boat with three cups, a medium boat with two cups, and a single boat with one cup. To make the game harder, I used mini red solo cups instead of the usual sized ones. You can use larger ones if you would like, but your boats would have to be larger then mine. I cut the foam with a box cutting knife and although foam pieces got everywhere, it was a pretty easy process.
We had each set of two create a name, and pulled names out of a hat to play tournament style. We had two games going at a time. We had some music playing, and it was a pretty relaxed event. When it comes to advertising alcohol awareness programs, I love doing 3D door reminders by writing the program information on a red solo cup and taping it to doors. I don’t have a picture of mine, but that was how I advertised it to residents.
Everything on my blog takes place at the University of Maine at Presque Isle. Feel free to contact me with any questions, Alexandra.desruisseaux@maine.edu.
This was program that fulfilled my requirement for diversity/ inclusivity. My apologies for the (very) low quality picture of my flyer.
To make the fondue, I used my crockpot and doubled the recipe that I found online. Here is the link:
http://carlsbadcravings.com/slow-cooker-chocolate-fondue-recipe/
I doubled the recipe and put it in the crock pot for about an hour and a half on low instead of an hour. In hindsight, it was more chocolate then we had needed but a single batch probably wouldn’t have been enough. I couldn’t find bittersweet chips so I used additional semi sweet chips and it still worked fine. I prepped all of the things to dip into fondue ahead of time and put them into ziploc bags so that it would be a quick and easy program setup.
The toppings I used were strawberries, pineapple, red apple, green apple, pound cake, rice krispie treats, mini nilla wafers, pretzels, marshmallows, and Oreos.
For the program aspect, I used a big whiteboard that we already have in our building lounge. Each person took a turn sitting in front of the whiteboard while the rest of us wrote our favorite thing about them or a wonderful strength they possess. I told my residents before we started to keep everything appropriate and to remember that for some people, it’s hard to take the spotlight like this. I think some people needed a reminder that we aren’t writing just observations when we can’t think of anything, so there was a little bit of redirection necessary. Overall, it went really well and residents seemed to be really excited to read their own boards.
Everything on my blog takes place at the University of Maine at Presque Isle. Feel free to contact me with any questions, Alexandra.desruisseaux@maine.edu.
Finding your Identi-Tea was a program that covered the category of career planning. For this program, ask your residents to bring a web enabled device such as a phone or laptop. A laptop/ something which a larger screen is preferred, but a phone will do. Have them take the 16 personalities test at 16personalities.com. This breaks everyone down into 16 categorized personality types and from my own experience is extremely accurate. Then, I had my residents decorate a white coffee mug with Oil Paint Sharpies. They were told to turn their mug into a collage of the various good qualities, workplace habits, and career paths that are recommended for their type. As people were finding out what type they were, they were conversing over their similarities and differences. This was a great introductory program for freshman and helped a lot of people get out of their comfort zone with talking about themselves. We also made some tea using my keurig (anything that boils water will do) and talked about the results for a while. All of the residents left with a visual reminder of all of the traits the posses and career directions they could potentially go in if they ever feel lost.
Supplies needed: White coffee mugs and Oil Paint Sharpies. You can instead use regular sharpies, but they wash off a lot easier. Keurig or something that boils water and various sorts of tea bags.
Everything on my blog takes place at the University of Maine at Presque Isle. Feel free to contact me with any questions, Alexandra.desruisseaux@maine.edu.
I made both of these directly before Spring break which perfectly connected with the themes of traveling and adventure. For the door decorations, I used construction paper and scrapbook paper. The headlights were made with some silver tape and the wheels were made by coloring the bottom black with a sharpie. I hand picked different quotes relating to travel and adventure for each of my residents and wrote it on the right side of the bus. Since our school is in Maine, the license plate is a Maine one with their room number as the license plate number. After I made myself a stencil and got into the routine, they didn’t take all that long to make.
For the bulletin board, I started by making a larger Volkswagen bus from the side view using a tie dye foam sheet. This one took a while. The quote at the top is from Alice in Wonderland and says, “Actually, the best gift you could have given her was a lifetime of adventures”. On the board, I also wrote “What’s an adventure that’s on your Summer bucket list? Write it on a tree”. I left a marker hanging on the board and I noticed that the trees filled up with ideas pretty quickly. This was one of my most successful interactive bulletin boards.
Everything on my blog takes place at the University of Maine at Presque Isle. Feel free to contact me with any questions, Alexandra.desruisseaux@maine.edu.
Alex the Resident Assistant 