{"id":15684,"date":"2015-12-10T14:27:44","date_gmt":"2015-12-10T20:27:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/?p=15684"},"modified":"2015-12-10T14:29:50","modified_gmt":"2015-12-10T20:29:50","slug":"residential-life-and-the-choices-we-make-an-interview-with-michelle-banks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/2015\/12\/10\/residential-life-and-the-choices-we-make-an-interview-with-michelle-banks\/","title":{"rendered":"Residential Life and the Choices We Make, an interview with Michelle Banks"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cHow did you choose to become an RC at IMSA? What led to this decision?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI graduated from IMSA in 2005. After graduating from college, I wasn\u2019t really sure if I wanted to be a teacher, so I looked at my options and thought it would be a good idea to return to IMSA since it had done a lot for me when I was a student. I started out as an RC in 1506 for 2 years, and then moved up to the Area Coordinator position.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo you mentioned that IMSA had a profound effect on you?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI came from a really small town with only 1500 people. So not a lot of opportunities. The highest math was Algebra 3, and I thought that I could not really do stuff there. SO I applied to IMSA and got in\u2026it put me on the track to being an independent thinker, and learning for myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDid you do an SIR?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I was actually very into art as an IMSA student, and I would spend around 6-8 hours in the ceramic room every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHave you ever had any life-changing experiences that taught you a lot?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cAs a staff member the main thing that I learned, sometimes with these students, their grades are slipping, or they\u2019re missing class. You never really know what\u2019s going on in their lives unless you actually go in and talk with them, and help them in any way possible to overcome some of the struggles that teenagers today are facing.<\/p>\n

As a student, the most important thing that I learned was to never lie to your RC. {laughs} I used to break in-room\u2014you know, not that much\u2014but I am pretty sure that my RC knew, but not that she knew I had to homework and other things. Your RC knows a lot more about you than you would expect. I think that an RC should have a balance between letting students have fun and making sure they are safe\u2014you don\u2019t want to be a dictator, and I think that letting the students have fun is very important.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you have any advice for staff and students\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cFor students, it would be that staff and faculty are not as scary as they seem. You should build good relationships, and those relationships will really help you out in life, and if you have a good relationship with them, they will be more likely to go out of the way to help you.<\/p>\n

For staff, it would be never stop innovating. Things tend to get stagnant if you keep on doing the same things year after year, so be dynamic and change as the things around you change.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou mentioned that students now have more struggles.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cSocial media was just starting when I was a student\u2014yes I had a Myspace\u2014but now people just invest so much time in social media. In addition to that, just the stress of college applications. You know, when I was a student, it was just you have your good GPA, decent SAT score, and 6 or 8 extracurricular activities, you were like set for college. But now there so much more pressure and competition\u2014you read these horror stories of students paying thousands of dollars for counseling services to help you get into Harvard and taking the SAT 8 times\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo do you have any advice for students to help us overcome that pressure?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe decisions you make now are not final. If you are not 100% sure what you want to do in this life, that\u2019s okay because you have a lot of life ahead of you. You may go in thinking you\u2019re going to be Pre-med, and then you might discover you have a passion for another field\u2014just because you signed up for a certain program, it\u2019s never too late to change. As you grow and change as an individual, you are allowing your future to follow that. You are never stuck in whatever you signed up to do. College is where you\u2019re supposed to explore.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do make sure you find that passion you\u2019re going to invest a lot of time in?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cTry new things. Like, the biggest thing for me. Depending on the program you do, most likely the first few years in college are not nearly going to be as stressful as your junior year at IMSA. So you can use that time to explore and try new things\u2014in positive ways only, though. It\u2019s a great time to find out who you are.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd do you think that you ever completely find out who you are?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWell, who you are changes as you grow and develop. You know, a piece of artwork is never finished, it just stops at interesting places. That\u2019s how it is with people: who you are at any given time, you can identify with it, but you\u2019re going to continue to develop and grow. If you make some mistakes, you can always get back on track\u2014even if it takes years, but you can always turn around and get back on track.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cHow did you choose to become an RC at IMSA? What led to this decision?\u201d \u201cI graduated from IMSA in 2005. After graduating from college,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":207,"featured_media":15719,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1019],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2391],"class_list":["post-15684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-imsanews"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/207"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15684"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15718,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15684\/revisions\/15718"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15684"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=15684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}