Part 1: "A Slender Thread" by Diane Ackerman

I’m writing about Diane Ackerman’s story “A Slender Thread” because it strikes the greatest chord with me in the difficulties of the RA role. As Danielle already summarized in her blog entry, Ackerman recounts an experience at a suicide hotline, in which she worked on broadening the possibilities for her caller from simply suicide to choosing to live and see the great impact she makes in her life. Eventually during the conversation Ackerman must call the police to save the life of her caller, and later learns that her caller not only survived the night but also gained employment and greatly appreciated Ackerman’s intervention to save her life.

Two aspects of this story stuck out to me: the author’s continued insistence on the importance and strength of the caller, and the author’s worries about her own inadequacies as a hotline operator. The primary lesson of providing continuous support relates to the goal of Personal Development, specifically the goals of empowering first-year students to “articulate, reflect on and adapt their vision for self,” and to create behaviors to “support and engender… health and well-being.” People—at every stage in their lives—often don’t see just how amazing they are and the great impact they have on others: Ackerman’s caller raised children on her own, volunteered during a flood, and is a source of immense support for people in her life. Nevertheless, the hardest critics in our lives are ourselves, and oftentimes we need other people to remind us that we are all amazing, and that our beautiful passions and our dreams are valid, worthy, and important. We as RAs occupy this role of being another source of support and being a constant “Hype man” for our residents and everyone else in our lives (as practiced in Playfair the last two years, the Hype Man/Woman shouts words of encouragement and motivation specific to a person’s talents, and brings an atmosphere of all-around excitement to the table). We have to be our residents’ biggest fans and remind them of how awesome they are when they forget and think that their actions don’t matter.

Another part of this story that I relate to is the author’s worry about not being the best match for her caller: 

“Maybe I could have calmed her and talked her round? Maybe someone else would have prevailed, someone who can do this slow tango of life and death with more grace and cunning.”

 We reflect on the consequences of our actions and decisions, and similarly reflect on the effectiveness of our actions. We wonder whether a different decision would have been better, or whether the impact we made was large enough. The tricky part of this reflection is when we wonder if someone else could have done it better, made the better decision, or just been a better person for the job. This mental trap of worrying about not being as good as other leaders, students, RAs, only works against us when we’re trying to motivate ourselves. I experienced this feeling last year when comparing myself to other RAs who were more outgoing, spent more time on their floors, and did more interesting events. What took me out of this funk was realizing that the time and effort I put into my floor was still awesome, and that my floor appreciated everything I did, rather than comparing it to someone who wasn’t their RA. (It also immensely helped that Folashade, one of my fellow Mudge RAs, would ask me what floor events I was having, and said that she constantly asked herself, “What would Vivian do?” Folashade was definitely my Hype Woman and a great source of support on my RA staff.) At the end of the day we are all living our own lives, and the most important thing we do is put our best efforts into everything, and be authentic in these efforts: when you pour yourself into something, the brilliance of your passion will shine through undoubtedly.