This Was a New One For Me: Training 72 Residential Advisors at Fairfield University to Inspire a New Year

There was a lot of them.

The first thing we had to do is shake up their comfortable seating arrangement - you know, reorganized them so that residential halls sat with others from the same residential hall.

These are Fairfield University RAs for the 2018-2019 school year (bless their hearts). I remember my RA from freshman year at Binghamton (Maurice) and how he was in the same suite as me and other freshman, but we ended up with my 21 year old roommate, Roger, and then everything got really crazy rather quick. I'd have it no other way. I always said Roger had his #@@ wall and his $$$ wall, then there was the beer wall. We were well decorated and lived up to his decoration.

Weird to be asked to present to the 72 residential assistants on campus to pump them up for a new year - they wanted me to rev them up about Magis - the spirit of the good - and to think about ways they might get their residents to look beyond campus for community work.

Well, hello, Ubuntu.
Well, hello, Hoops Africa: Ubuntu Matters.
No brainer.

I was told I needed to address what inspirations I've had in my own journey, but also to address innovative ways to approach community work. I did this by naming all the kids that I've worked with that have changed my life forever and then giving them case studies of how Ubuntu, as a philosophy, has changed my life on campus: (1) working with John Legend and the LRNG grant, (2) working with NWP and my vision for Young Adult Literacy Labs, including Ubuntu Academy, and (3) working with my cousin, Coach Sydney Johnson, and producer Taylor Sharp to make Hoops Africa: Ubuntu Matters possible at Fairfield University. I was able to distribute 72 posters and rev up the troops for a new school year.

JOIN ME IN THE MOVEMENT OF HUMAN TOGETHERNESS.

We shall see how it goes.

Weird. I was so nervous. Maybe because I didn't last in dorm life (cough cough - residential housing) too long. I told them, "I was never meant to live with others in such a setting." I loved my time in university housing, but I was too smart to think about the economics of it all and I got off campus as soon as I could. This generation, though - they're get hooked/trapped/forced to stay on campus. Phew .
It is safe. I get that. It's isolated and beautiful, too. And I know this, because Chitunga was caught by the same trap at LeMoyne and told, "You can't live off campus as a freshman."

I guess times have change.

It was a successful day and I am glad to have spent the time I did with the University leaders. I came home to Chitunga, returning from Maine, packing to return to upstate New York to finish his final semester of undergraduate work before he steps into his 5th year.

Sad to know it's a short time left together, but I'm proud of him and ready for his investment unto himself. Still, I love having him at home. Ah, adulthood and life.