Dear Horseshoe Staff,

Hi! It’s been a long time since I have seen all of you, I wanted to catch you up on how life has been.

It’s weird to think that most of us have finished with our undergrad degrees and a lot of us have moved away from Louisiana. I’ve just finished my first semester of grad school here at MSU, and it’s been some of the busiest few months of my life. I hope that you can forgive me if I haven’t spoken to you in a while, but I think back to the times we shared together often.

When we first met in the fall of 2016, I was a sophomore just starting out in Graphic Design. Most of my gen ed classes were out of the way, and I was taking my studio art classes. They were fun, but I used to feel left out because I was in class for so long. You were my first Resident Assistant (RA) staff and from the first few days there, I felt like I’d known each of you for years. Even though we knew each other through work, you all made every night weird and fun. Having scavenger hunts on rounds and trying to figure out who had whom for Secret Santa made it more than just a job.

Now that I’m a supervisor, things have definitely changed. There’s a lot more paperwork in my life and so many more deadlines to keep up with. At least my RAs stop by every now and then to show me a PowerPoint about why we should remove all the doors to our front desk. (Some of the older RAs run into them because they’re not used to them being there. Occupational hazard, I guess!)

I see a lot of myself and a lot of you all in many of the students that I work with. Taco Bell is just as popular here as it was down there. And it’s still tastier after midnight, if what my RAs tell me is true. Seeing them all together reminds me of the late nights that we spent watching reality TV and cooking macaroni and cheese in our community kitchen. Do you all remember the night that we went out to the levee and saw a shooting star?

Here is a picture of my new staff, over Zoom because that’s how things are these days. I wasn’t at the staff meeting so one of my RAs edited me in, not sure if you can tell. I hope I can see all soon, you’re always in my thoughts. 

(submitted by Harry Riel, Assistant Hall Director, Residence Life; Student Affairs in Higher Education Masters Student; Family Programs Spring 2021 Practicum student)