The Meaning of Being an RA

" I want you to know that I talk about my RA 'Kristina' on every one of my tours and all the floor bonding we did. Little do they know I wasn't even there technically..."
-Hercules "USC Tour Guide/Honorary BK5 Member" Walker

What prompted me to write this post is the aforementioned quote that Hercules posted on my
Facebook wall just a few hours ago. Herc was an honorary resident of the floor for which I RA'd when I was a sophomore, and yes, when I first met him, I asked if "Hercules" really was his real name, too (it is). He's now a USC Tour Guide and speaks to probably hundreds of wannabe Trojans daily. I really, really appreciate his words.

In the end, being an RA at USC was worth every single hour spent babysitting immature freshmen; sitting in arguably pointless hours of meeting after meeting; feeling terrified that I'd be caught at a campus-party; waking up at 4am to herd hordes of my fuming peers out to the chilly street during yet another piercing fire alarm, caused by an overcooked egg or something stupid like that; missing nights out with my girls or racing back to my designated building to be on duty ("AGAIN?!"); devoting more time to cooking food for my residents than preparing for that 30%-of-my-grade final the next day; stressing out over events and outings that would mean nothing on my resume or transcript; initially feeling that I missed out on my sophomore year because all my friends lived together and I lived in a freshman dorm...all that, and more (I didn't even mention write-ups! And paperwork!).

True, being an RA was often a hassle. But the two years during which I wore that hat were worth it. Hands down, no doubt.

I always told prospective RA's that taking on the role of an RA is also signing on to a life change. No longer can you recklessly party at odd hours, whenever and wherever. You have to watch your actions and words because someone -- be it your resident, staff member, AC/AD/RC/ARC, or someone from Central Staff at ResEd --will be watching you. Make a wrong move and you could get sent to SJACS and lose your job. Little did I know that taking on the role, though I was no longer a "normal" student, allowed for my life to be changed because of the people I met and allowed me to impact the lives of people I'd encountered.

My first year as an RA was at Birnkrant Residential College, where I lived my freshman year. Loved that place, which is why I returned as a sophomore. I RA'd for freshman, some of whom were older than me in age, for a whole year, which was my most favorite year during my three years of college. I was lonely in the beginning of the year because I missed my own friends; people who had occupied the same rooms a year earlier were now filled with those who looked to me as an authority figure (me? an authority? baha.). But sooner than later, thesover and all of you were from hell or something like that. e people became my friends, and some of my best memories stem from them. Thanks to all of you. Thanks for vomiting in the girl's sink the first night you moved in and made me have a nervous breakdown. Now, it's funny. Thanks for all the cuties on my floor who offered their arms to me when I was terrified at the Knott's Scary Farm trip I had planned. Oh, speaking of which, thanks for being dubbed "the naked floor." I enjoyed the abs. Thanks for Greek food at Papa Cristo's with the little guy himself; the pizza party and contraband at the end of the year; the awkward bonfire at the end of the year. Thanks for teaching me how to play the guitar, for allowing me to experience what it's like to be a Mom of teenagers, because really, I worried about you (note to self: wait to have kids)! Thanks for jumping in the shower and giving me a soaked hug on our last night, dog-piling me onto my bed, where you girls spent countless hours watching GG and ANTM, even when I wasn't there. Thanks for eating with me at EVK; for walking with me to The Row; obsessing over The Trojan Men with me; for making my room that much more cozy. All of you rock. BK5 for life.





My third and final year was spent at Troy. It was an apartment complex so I didn't get as close to my residents as I did the previous year, but still, it was a blast. Despite the what, 20+ fire alarms we had throughout the course of the year. UGH. And despite the countless times I got lost in the halls, I loved it there. I loved that my floor was mostly all guys and therefore I didn't have to do a lot of roommate counseling. Ya'll fought it out on your own. I loved cooking for you and forcing you to eat the leftovers because Lord knew I didn't need the extra pizza when there were boys-who-survived-off-cereal-and Ramen who lived a few doors down. I knew a lot of the residents there because a lot of them lived in Birnkrant, which made Troy all-the-more-homely...although honestly, breaking up your parties was really weird. I'd walk into a party like, "Alright, this music has got to st-- Cindy?! Is that YOU?! OMG! HOW ARE YOU?!" -_- Life.

What made my experiences even MORE great were the staff teams. Birnkrant was so fun. I'm so glad I got to meet the people on my staff. My "boss" Christine is now a dear friend, someone whom I call "jie," which means "older sister" in Chinese. And to the Troy staff: what can I say. We all know that I waterworked it at our end-of-the-year luncheon, but that pretty much summed up how much fun I had with ya'll. Hell, I spent my last night of college running around the empty building with you, playing hide-n-seek, chillin' in an elevator with Hitomi and waiting to be found. Tronding. Rock Band. Devos. Slip-n-slide. Bonfire. Wan Won. No-No, thanks for going to the football games with me. BBQing. Non-birthday cakes during training. Cake stands. I knew we'd all get along well from day one. "JEALOUS?!" Hell yea, I'm jealous I'm not a part of the staff this year.





It's quite obvious that I'm in reminiscence-mode right now, but it feels good to tell all of you this and encourage those who are still RAs to cherish the experience. I've graduated and miss it so much. There are a lot of things you have to give up in order to be an RA, but the rewards are endless and gratifying beyond measure.

And thanks, Herc, for sharing with me. I don't think many RAs take the position for the recognition...but the recognition means a lot.

Ruled Out - Our Documentary

I shot, wrote, created this documentary called "Ruled Out" along with five other talented USC classmates. We interviewed boys at risk at Crenshaw High School -- one of the schools in the "roughest" areas in Los Angeles, and ironically, a 15 minute drive from USC -- for a semester, and made a documentary that was relevant to their lives. Hopefully it made some bit of a dent.



http://youtu.be/6Ck9aHROlL4

Anticipating "The Soloist"

After I watched the 2006 movie, “Blood Diamond”, I walked out of the theater enraged. I passionately vowed to never accept a conflict diamond when I would hopefully be proposed to one sweet day; I joined common interest groups on facebook – “Blood Diamonds are for NEVER”; I even donated a whooping five dollars towards the cause through Amnesty International.

A week later, the burning flame I felt about this awful problem died. Conflict diamonds in Africa didn’t directly affect my semi-charmed life and I ditched all my efforts. So much for that.

On April 24th when “The Soloist” is released, I want to challenge the apathetic, such as myself, to overcome this bipolar-like tendency to activate – then spectate – when confronted with a social problem. A movie about the friendship between Los Angeles Times staff writer, Steve Lopez, and a homeless man named Nathaniel Ayers, who was once a prodigious cellist at Julliard but was displaced because of a mental illness, the film will unveil the issue of homelessness that lies merely five miles from my current residence near the swanky University of Southern California.

Though we may cringe when facing the ugly flaws that exist in our backyard, the numbers do not lie: homelessness in Los Angeles is becoming an epidemic. Known as the “Homeless Capitol of the United States”, Los Angeles was ironically the residence for nearly 142,000 homeless people, 80% of whom were living unsheltered – that is, in alleys, encampments, overpasses, or doorways in 2008. Our reputation is going strong, too. USA Today recently reported that the number of people using a winter shelter program in Los Angeles jumped from 330 families in the 2007-08 winter to 620 this year – an almost doubling of displaced men, women, and children during a few months in 2009 alone. These atrocities are all occurring in our very own City of Angels.

Lopez has done a great public service through this movie by shedding light on a local problem that has for too long needed national attention. But unfortunately, we are not alone in our woes. The same USA Today report said, for instance, that this year, Seattle has seen a 40 percent increase in homelessness in its suburbs; in Miami, evictions have quadrupled, and fifty-nine percent more people made calls to a homelessness prevention hotline in Chicago. The economy has proven to be non-discriminatory as it has kicked families to the streets all across the nation.

Homelessness is on the rise. It may be scary to admit, but had life dealt us different cards, our families very well could have found ourselves in the desperate and frightening situation that so many thousands are in today. So while it is understandably difficult during these tough economic times to try to care for others when we find it hard to support ourselves, let the statistics and “The Soloist” prove that though life may seem hard for us, it could be worse.

Jimmy Carter once said, “The measure of society is found in how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens,” a saying that could not be more fitting in a time like this. Particularly during this period of national hardship, we cannot afford for apathy to override our obligations to care for those that are hurting when our nation is trying to rebuild itself.

We can collectively attempt to appease the issue of homelessness by giving a few hours of our time to volunteer at local homeless shelters. They are over capacity and need more hands to help. If you have the funds, donate to permanent supportive housing initiatives, such as the Corporation for Supportive Housing, which offer a place to live with the necessary support services that might help someone get back on their feet. At the minimum, subscribe to PATH Partner’s “LA Homeless Blog” to keep yourself informed.

It is my hope that “The Soloist” will be the catalyst for social change that is direly needed in this nation today. But while the anticipated film has already received much publicity, I fear that the golden opportunity for activism that it possesses will be overlooked, as I have done before. What “The Soloist” needs to be not is just another tear-jerking movie, but a real-life mover. We cannot settle to be audience members, merely watching human suffering on the big screen, when we could really get the real experience for free if we hopped in our cars and drove to the “bad side” of Downtown Los Angeles.

When “The Soloist” is released, activate – don’t spectate. Let us seize the opportunity to become actors in our own rights by playing the part of engaged citizens in a time when our society needs us the most.

Save Our Teachers

Growing up in the K-12 school system in the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District (PVPUSD), I received an excellent education, which I attribute to my near-completion of a degree at the University of Southern California. The environment was one where I knew my success mattered to my educators. So when Governor Schwarzenegger cut $3,700,000 from the PVPUSD annual school budget in 2008 and 60 of our teachers were at risk of being given the dreaded pink slip, our community returned the favor, starting a $1.2 million fundraising campaign called “Save our Teachers” to disallow for their layoffs – because they mattered to us.

It would be nice to say that the teachers of the nearby Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) were as well cared for, but the recent distribution of 9,000 pink slips has proven the opposite: education is not at the forefront of Los Angeles’s priorities. Though PVPUSD does have an advantage over LAUSD because its community is more monetarily endowed, the $1 billion that LAUSD could receive from the federal stimulus package could still be used to create jobs, not to eliminate them. The worst part of these cutbacks is that they not only decrease the quality of students’ learning environments and eliminate current teachers’ careers; they also discourage aspiring educators like myself from entering the field. Everyone loses.

Those currently at risk for being laid off are some of LAUSD’s brightest – and youngest-- teachers. Lacking tenure rights with only two years of work experience, the threat to their current jobs sends a message to recent college graduates that there is no incentive to pursue a career in education. LAUSD has thus set itself up for long-term failure by eliminating the opportunity for our new teachers - the futures of education – to make an impact on our youth – the future of our nation.

I speak on behalf of the “do-good” generation that truly wants to improve America in these most desperate of times. Those of us who have found our calling to make a difference by teaching in the communities that need us the most – not the PVPUSD’s of America, who are fortunate enough to have financial community support, but the LAUSD’s of our nation, which boast graduation rates along the likes of 44% –are finding that our dreams to enter professions that value educational progression over personal paychecks are dishearteningly difficult.

Even those who do not consider teaching as a full-time profession still look into post-graduate, short-term programs that allow us to make differences in peoples’ lives. I considered applying to Teach for America, a program that allows recent college graduates a two-year opportunity to teach in inner-city schools with the overarching goal to close America’s achievement gap. However, with cutbacks in education, it hardly seemed fair to me to take the position of people who depend on teaching as full-time careers when I would be more of a temporary band-aid to a greater educational problem. In fact, the Boston Teacher’s Union currently feels this way toward Teach for America 2009 participants as they are fighting a bitter battle of entitlement that could easily arise in Los Angeles. Sadly, because education has become a scarce resource, teachers who are at risk of being laid off have come to see such programs as threats rather than assets and improvements to America.

I have often been told not worry about my limited post-graduate career prospects, for in the midst of this economic chaos comes the opportunity for me to step up to the plate and lead America out of the mess that we are in. While this optimism is indeed inspiring, the reality is that my classmates and I literally cannot enter careers that would afford us the opportunity to put our idealism into action, and there is nothing we can do about it.

PVPUSD worked to save its teachers. It is my hope that LAUSD will follow suit, for if it does not do something to recover these jobs soon, the knowledge and energetic flame that young educators crave to share with America’s youth may burn out indefinitely – and the moral consequence will be far more detrimental than any financial crisis our country has ever seen.

How the economy hits close to home

If you haven't seen this Youtube video yet, please watch it. One of my professors of a documentary class that I'm taking sent it to me. It's a very real, timely, and touching documentary about how the economic situation is affecting students in Pomona, CA. I think it's important for people like myself, who come from economically stable (thankfully) families and are attending prestigious universities, to remember to relate to and try to help people who are not in the same fortunate situations. Seeing this only further reinforces my decision to volunteer with City Year in Boston next year...(http://www.cityyear.org)

"Is anybody listening?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WMTTrOrKVI

And here's a story about the video from the LA Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-me-pomona-school13-2009mar13,0,5729334.story

How Hollywood Can Help the Homeless

Below is an Op-Ed that I wrote for my Polical Science class that Steve Lopez, a columnist for the LA times, has read and edited himself. It's long, but you can handle it. :)
_______________________________________________________________________________

How Hollywood Can Help the Homeless
By Kristina Lee

Cursed is Los Angeles for being the “Entertainment Capitol of the World,” for the fanciful title steals all the spotlight from L.A.’s other Very Important People: the homeless. Overshadowed by mindless celebrity gossip, the pressing issue is too often neglected by the media, shoved under the rug.

But alas, there is a glimmer of hope that Hollywood and the homeless can collaborate. Soon to be released is “The Soloist,” a movie based on a book written by the Los Angeles Times staff columnist, Steve Lopez. The movie recounts Lopez’s unlikely friendship with Nathaniel Ayers, a homeless musician living on Skid Row.

I have yet to see the movie, but its concept and potential for social activism is thrilling. The film, which stars A-list actors Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr., is bound to make the big bucks, but hopefully, the movie’s success will instead be measured by the amount of viewers who feel compelled to act on its message.

Finally. It’s about time something be done.

The issue at hand is that L.A. is known as the “Homeless Capitol of the United States.” It was reported that in 2008, nearly 142,000 people were homeless, 80% of whom were living unsheltered - that is, in alleys, encampments, overpasses, or doorways. Furthermore, a Los Angeles homeless count was recently conducted in January and February earlier this year, and the published numbers are sure to be even greater as more people are losing their jobs and are forced be destitute.

Hard as it is to accept that our beloved city is a slum for so many thousands, this stark contrast between the rich and the poor exists. What’s even harder to swallow is that the way in which we handle the clash between the two worlds is often mindboggling, even repulsive.

The Hollywood Greek Reporter wrote, for example, that on the Sunday of the 81st Academy Awards, a day when “the rich and famous were wearing clothes and jewelry whose worth could easily feed all the homeless people of Los Angeles,” two people were found searching for food in the trash cans along Hollywood Boulevard, right next to the Kodak Theater itself.

Another incident occurred at 5am on February 24, 2009 when the celebrity Nicky Hilton had a homeless man arrested for pushing her outside of IHOP in Los Angeles. Granted, it’s never nice for anyone, regardless of status, to push another, but was arrest necessary?

These two instances prove that when our semi-charmed lives are interrupted by encounters with the homeless, we react in fight or flight tendencies. It is apparent that when confronted, the response of choice has been to run away, rather than to fight for the humanity of our fellow Angelenos. Compassion has taken a back seat to our impulsive defenses against the misunderstood.

We have chosen to flee from the burden of homelessness in our backyard because it is easier to resort to this mindset than to attempt to understand and deal with the guilt we feel from our lack of activism. Maybe we’re scared to know just how much we’re at fault for not caring.

Thank goodness Lopez cared for Ayers though, the subject of “The Soloist,” who is “not some bum,” Lopez wrote to me, “but a brother and son who was struck down through no fault of his own, and who was left to defend himself against predators, rats and cockroaches on the streets of Skid Row.”

Perhaps we fail to act because we’re too scared to recognize that the homeless, like Ayers, are actual people. Just like you and me.

Jimmy Carter once said, “The measure of a society is found in how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens.” Unless we act, celebrities like Ms. Hilton will standardize L.A.’s message to the homeless: stay in your filth; if you disrupt us, we will push you back down and show you where you belong.

It is a shame that such apathy and insensitivity have become normative behavior towards L.A.’s dispossessed, but if it takes a movie to put a face to homelessness and popularize activism, well, that’s a start.

Thus, do not simply pay for your movie ticket and watch “The Soloist” when it is released in April 2009; rather, watch “The Soloist” and pay-it-forward. Let the movie stir you to action. Help fund solutions to homelessness, mainly permanent supportive housing initiatives, such as the Corporation for Supportive Housing. In doing so, we can transform this hell-on-earth for so many thousands to be a City of Angels for all.