Other Duties as Assigned

Hey everyone. Well I am happy to report that after making yesterday's blog, I have not seen any Best Buy pre-roll ads about "winning the holidays". So that's nice. Wal-Mart has taken up the mantle of playing 90% of the ads, and while those ads are also about Christmas shopping, it's at least trying to be factual. Like, "hey, we have a wishlist app on our website which is probably really similar to Amazon" or "if you go and do these things, you can still buy something on Black Friday even if we don't have any physical copies left in-store". As odd as it is for me to say, I'll side with seeing the Wal-Mart ads.

Anyway, I wanted to talk about the four words that are a quintessential part of positions in Student Affairs: Other Duties as Assigned. It's usually thrown in on the bottom of the list of job responsibilities, and it can be played out much differently between positions or institutions. The general idea is that SA staff will get called on to do random stuff as part of the job, and those random tasks fall under the umbrella of "other duties as assigned" rather than listing out everything single thing that could happen.

Today, I got to try out a new facet of "other duties as assigned" by helping mop up the student kitchen. A toilet had overflowed (don't worry - it was clean water that backed up) and spilled into the kitchen and nearby laundry room. After Campus Safety came by, I was waiting for Housekeeping to come in and I decided to wrap a mop and bucket to start removing the water. Now technically I didn't need to do it, but I did want to have someone around to warn people of the water (especially since we couldn't find any Wet Floor signs). Plus, doing some mopping meant that the housekeeper would have less to suck up with an extractor, saving her some time too.

I'm trying to think of other examples of "other duties as assigned". I do remember shoveling the steps to my building last winter and the scenario was similar to tonight (it wasn't technically required, but I wanted to help solve the problem). Otherwise, there are little moments like driving out to grab pizza for an RA program, helping some senior RAs prep for OPE, and making Halloween door decs for my staff. Okay, so technically some of these weren't assigned exactly, but I think you get the point. There are a lot of little things that will pop up in the position, so it's all about being ready for anything. I think it's something I'll miss but not miss when I transition out of working in housing.

Anyway, I need to rest up before tomorrow since I was nodding off earlier. Tomorrow will be Fibonacci Day (11/23 -> 1, 1, 2, 3) and National Espresso Day.

DFTBA