A cliché. My English teachers always told me not to write with clichés, but here it goes:
"Experience is a hard teacher; it gives you the test first and the lesson later."
I saw that on a poster in a dorm where I was a Resident Advisor (RA).
Like Robert Fulghum, who wrote All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, I could probably write All I Really Needed to Know I Learned as a Resident Advisor.
Those lessons mostly fall under "how to effectively lead your peers while maintaining a culture where people actually want to live." "Keeping the peace" isn't simple when the 120 men in your hall live in a co-ed, 880-person dorm on a 25,000-student campus.
Nonetheless, someone saw fit to employ me in that role for three years. I could tell stories galore, but a few highlights stand out:
I allowed sports in the hallway as long as they didn't damage university or resident property. I only had to ban two: hockey (real stick and puck) and bowling (real ball and pins, with a wooden door as a backstop).
Men didn't have as many roommate disputes as the women. I only mediated one case in three years—a roommate who set his alarm for 7 a.m. and snoozed it every 10 minutes for hours.
And when you want to prank your neighbor by filling his room with packing peanuts, make sure someone can compute volume first. After cutting a one-foot hole through the wall, they found their stash of peanuts wasn't nearly enough. They paid for the wall damage and their prank fell flat.
All kidding aside, living in the same building for four years and serving as an Resident Advisor for three was a great proving ground for life.
Next time your college-age kids or grandkids want to move off campus, suggest applying for an Resident Advisor job instead.