another reason to give thanks

It's Thanksgiving Eve here in Lithuania, even though Lithuania doesn't acknowledge the fact. Still, I am thankful tonight. Erik had a bunch of music practices this evening and I had a lot of work to still do, so I decided to do my sit myself down in the lobby and be a part of the student activities. One of the student activities happening tonight is a photo scavenger hunt competition. I remember doing a photo scavenger hunt during my college days that took us all over the Roseville, MN vicinity. I remember that I had a blast...trying to get strangers to do ridiculous things and than taking a picture to verify the ridiculous things we had done. It looks and sounds like these student are having a blast tonight as well. The event is confined to the residence hall and there are 4 teams of students running around trying to take the most pictures and see who can get the most points.

I am laughing quietly to myself as I think about the reason this event is happening. It's all part of my creative, strategic, and of course calculated, attempts to create community in Neumann Hall. Part of my job as Resident Director entails coming up with consequences for students who violate policies. I have made it my goal to hand out consequences that are as related to the behavior as possible. Hosting drinking parties in the dorms is exclusive to others and is disrespectful because it requires students to hide their behavior from the rest of the community. I am always trying to consider the possible ways that students can give back to the community around them. Therefore, I have required students to plan and coordinate hall events that encourage appropriate behavior and invite others to join in the fun. Sounds easy enough, right? To tell you the truth, I am surprised at how intimidating this type of consequence is to students. Sometimes the process is painfully slow and discouraging. At other times, I am amazed at the result.

Tonight our photo scavenger hunt organizers were two female Lithuanian students in their 3rd year at LCC. These ladies usually avoid attending organized events or anything that looks too much like community, yet I can tell that they are natural leaders within their social group on campus. It took them awhile to own the event, but it was neat to watch them problem solve and work through the issues that our RAs commonly face when trying to plan activities. I have noticed that there are LCC students that attend almost every single event that happens on campus and then there are others that seem difficult to convince to attend any event at all. 99% of tonight's photo scavenger hunt participants were definitely from the latter group I described. I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw which students were racing noisily around the residence hall trying to find the most photos before time ran out. I witnessed real enthusiasm and real laughter. I was even asked to be in some of the photos taken for the competition. It made my day. To top it all off, another group of ladies that I had given the same consequence to came back from hosting their event in Karklu, the other LCC residence hall. Their report was really positive. They said that the students had a good time, and they even admitted that each of them had a good time as well.

Today I am thankful for photo scavenger hunts. And the laughter that comes as a result. And the times when life works out even better than I expect.