Meisner combines family with work

For most working mothers, having their families at work is a rare occasion reserved only for office parties and an occasional lunch. For Amy Meisner, it is an everyday occurrence. For Amy, the office is home.

As complex director of Adams Hall, Amy lives in a cozy apartment with her husband Mark Meisner and their 5-year-old daughter Zoe. Her neighbors are the 250 students she is charged with supervising in what is, for most of them, their first real taste of adulthood.

Amy does not mind that her profession crosses the boundary between home and work. In fact, she enjoys it.

“It is nothing like I thought it would be. When I first came in here I thought that being on duty all the time was going to be extremely testing with no free time, but it really is not,” Amy said. “So it is not what people outside this profession think it would be. It also allows me a lot of flexibility. If I have something to do with Zoe’s school, I have the flexibility to do that.”

Her biggest problem could be that she enjoys her job a little too much.

“When you enjoy your job so much and you live where you work, sometimes it is challenging to set yourself off and know when to have time for yourself,” Amy said.

Even though she may be older than her residents, Amy works hard to make sure they are comfortable around her and her family. Residents are never allowed to utter the words “Mrs. Meisner” and many are on a first name biases with both Mark and Zoe.

Student Resident Assistants are Amy’s coworkers and friends. They are always free to stop in the office with the latest gossip from around campus and The Facebook. Her office walls are adorned with their numerous photos. Each set tells a story from a past RA event; each set shows a different generation of gone by.

“There are people from my first staff I had when I came here that I still keep in contact with,” Amy said. “Then there are some people that I never talk to any more. I have others in my life that are constant so I don’t necessarily look to my job to supply that for me.” Amy knows that her RA’s are students first and coworkers second. Keeping that fact in mind helps her to appreciate their growth from a student to an adult, especially when she is able to see the entire process.

“The one thing that is kind of unfortunate is that generally I won’t see people after their sophomore or junior year,” Amy said. “Most people live on campus for only a year or two, so you don’t normally get to see them all the way through college, but there are some that I have been able to see graduate. So when that happens, it is very rewarding.”

As for Zoe, both parents agree that growing up in a residence hall as has, for the most part, been a good experience.

“I think that it has helped her social skills. I want to say that it has given her a vast vocabulary, but some people might think ‘Yeah, I bet she has a vast vocabulary,’” Amy said with a big smile. “But it really has been good for her and helped to communicate.”

Zoe has had some misunderstandings.

“Zoe is used to the freedom of being able to hang out with anybody and everybody at the drop of the hat,” Mark. “So we are having to teach her about personal space.”

Zoe appears to have adjusted well. Sitting in her mother’s “office,” she tells anyone willing to listen that her favorite part of school is lunchtime and her favorite subject is eating snacks. After losing interest in the conversation, Zoe moves along to the cutout numbers her mother uses on bulletin boards.

“How do you write two?” she asks her father. She knows not to ask Amy. In this part of the office, mommy goes to work.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Sep 30 2005. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry