Staff Spotlight: Kay Torres
September 25, 2015
“You will create a second family with them, a kind of tribe that makes you feel less vulnerable. Sometimes our families can’t love us all the time. Sometimes we’re born into families who don’t know how to love us properly. They do as much as they can but the rest is up to our friends. They can love you all the time, without judgment. At least the good ones can.” – Ryan O’Connell, from “The People You Will Fall in Love with In Your 20’s”
My friends at Student Activities are some of the people who embody what Ryan O’Connell says about the friends you make in your 20’s. As a group, they are some of the people I love the most: from the full time staff who work behind the scenes to plan and coordinate every event, to the supervisors who plan alongside the full time staff, to the event staff who will hopefully become some of my lifelong friends.
One of our values at Student Activities is loving others, and I don’t think we’d be able to successfully love the student body without loving each other as a staff first. I believe that we execute quality events because our service to the student body starts with our service to each other. We hear it in staff meetings time and time again – “it starts with the staff”, and I truly believe that my experience at Student Activities has been such an integral part of my college experience because of the relationships I’ve made here.
I think that fostering relationships with each other is what helps us focus on creating relationships through our events, whether it’s at College For a Weekend tables (which are my personal favorite), or Block Party, or Bingo Nights where there are hundreds of 20-something year olds playing bingo. What other college can offer that? I believe that our events are successful because there is a collective group of people planning, promoting, and executing these events week after week. My experience at Student Activities wouldn’t be what it is today without that group of people.
There’s something so special about working 18+ hour shifts and then still wanting to go to IHOP together at 2AM. Who knew that building decorations for Coffeehouse, in the middle of a snowstorm inside a storage cage for hours on end could create friendships? It’s only been two months, but I can confidently say that this is going to be one heck of a year. The way the full time staff always seem to hire the right people boggles my mind. Honestly, there are days where I ask myself “How in the world did I get this job?!” But don’t just take my word for it, check out an event for yourself and stop by our promo table because I promise that no matter who the staff member is you stop and talk to, he or she should be one of the nicest people you’ll meet on campus.