ON THE END OF MY ROPE

Sometimes I really question my commitment to working with college students. I was on call last night, and it really got to me. I went to bed with an upset stomach, and there's no way it WASN'T stress-related.

I get incredibly frustrated by the ignorant behavior I see all around this campus. After a student disabled the fire sprinkler system and flooded a building on Monday night, Wednesday night saw two (2) fights, then I was on last night. And it didn't start out too badly, but as the night wore on, I got more and more upset about things. Stupid things, but once my mood got into the "bad" category, it wasn't improving itself.

I fail to see the allure in smashing the window in a public bathroom. A short while after that, I got a call that there was another fight - this turned out to be a "near miss," as another RD was able to successfully mediate things before they got out of control. Just after THAT, we got a call that two hallways were "trashed." I went over to check it out and it was ridiculous - shaving cream smeared into the carpet, trash thrown and kicked throughout, jelly smeared on doors and walls. It was disturbing and disgusting.

As I was walking back to my building, I was on the verge of just losing my temper entirely and likely embarrassing myself with a tantrum. I said a little prayer to help me make it through the night, and got back in my apartment. Despite my upset stomach, I eventually fell asleep, and did not receive another call all night.

Now, I'm not one to pretend to understand how faith works. In Cold Sassy Tree, author Olive Ann Burns says that prayer is for spiritual things and not material things - and that really made sense to me. So I don't know what happened last night - I'm not going to pretend to be important enough that God decided to make my half of the campus behave after 1 am. But I do know that I was at the end of my rope, then got a good night's sleep, and have now successfully climbed back up my rope, high enough to get perspective on things.