Why RA and Why not?

RA, Resident Assistant here on this post, will be defined as Resident Assistants working under National University of Singapore(NUS), Office of Student Affairs: Residential Life(OSA : RL) and positioned in one of NUS hostels: Prince George Park Residences (PGP).
After a year of being an RA, I'd like to share the merits and drawbacks of being an RA.

Merits of being an RA:
+ You get a free and guaranteed stay in NUS, PGP as long as you are an RA.
+ Your room is always room A which means it is nearby the cluster gate therefore less travel distance to the lift.
+ Your room's bed is a spring bed. (normal resident's room is not)
+ They let you to have an IPTelephone with NUS telephone number's extension: 6516XXXX (for mine it's 6516 4025)
+ You have a transponder that can go to any floors and access any cluster gates but not rooms.
+ You know your priorities (Student -> RA -> CCAs) although sometimes RA is more prioritized.
+ Your Resident Advisors (RADs) sometimes give you something, especially during Chinese New Year and if they are Chinese. ( :P)
+ You get to have Gymnasium memberships for free.
+ You get to have your face displayed on every cluster kitchens at your residence.
+ You attend workshops and annual team bonding trainings for free. And there are always good food served during/after the workshops. ( ;P)
+ If you are lucky, you get to know cute girls as RA and work very closely with them.
+ ditto, as Cluster leaders, do.
+ If you work in a proper and correct manner, you inspire people, especially freshmen.
+ It feels good after you have held your even well.
+ It feels good to resolve resident's problems or attend to their complaints.
+ You feel like a famous people because more people know you than you know people. "Hey, you are the RA right?"
+ You've got reasons to randomly smile at people. "I'm an RA and smiling at people is the least I should do so that my residents are not afraid of me"
+ You've got something to brag of on your resume.
+ You learn quite lots of good things and you can know your teammates very closely.
+ You can have leftover snacks/milo or whatever at it is OSA's money. Better we consume it rather than throw it away, RAs are also residents right?
+ You can get to know a lot of people especially during freshmen orientation at PGP.
+ etc.

Drawbacks of being an RA:
- You only have 10 days of leave during semester.
- You cannot leave the residence during your duty.
- Sometimes there are politics like the team is divided into two opposing parties. Or what about cold wars and you are the neutral side?
- Every RAs would want to try to lead and then no one wants to do work.
- preparation of events might sometimes get really crazy.
- If you are unlucky especially for males: you'll carry the 19 liter ice cubes for making drink for residents during an event.
- Sometimes some of your not-so-close friends needs your transponder to celebrate their other friends birthday. (got once, Malaysians)
- You don't have time to participate in CCAs of your field of interest.
- RAD ask you do his/her favor and sometimes you feel bad not doing it because he/she is very kind to you ( :P )
- Residents sometimes have weird complaints.
- Residents sometimes commits crime like peeping tom and you are not a policeman.
- Get ready to have yourself bothered during your sleeping hours.
- Shitty jobs like room verification and hardware inspection.
- You feel bad if you violate the housing guidelines because you are an RA, which is supposed to be a role model for residents.
- You need to perform better and better for following years. They don't have proper standards.
- You feel bad not to give your any Cluster Leaders reimbursements as their rewards for their work, but so far, I've given all of my Cluster Leaders their reimbursements.
- When you don't act in good manners, residents leave a bad impressions on you.
- When you do, they don't leave any good impressions on you because it's your task. Except for maybe when you really really have helped them a lot.
- Sometimes when your RA mates are feeling lazy, they refer the complaints they have to you. They "arrow" you.
- When you are fired, you don't even get a guaranteed stay, despite the fact that you have sacrificed your time for RA, not having time to collect CCA points to attain a stay at any of NUS hostels.
- Your friends sometimes make jokes of you, asking you to do deliveries to their rooms. Until now such request have not been satisfied. This condition can only be satisfied if they are so sick that they need to be isolated in one of the isolation units at Graduate student apartment.
- Sometimes you have to attend boring trainings.
- Sometimes your teammates are boring people or overly demanding people or any characters that you don't want to see.
- You know less hostel admin job and residents expect us to know more when we are not the hostel admin guys nor we are familiar with the hostel admin works, nor that you must satisfy resident's hostel admin matters.
- Some RAs work hard and they are not appreciated, some RAs just talk no work only and sometimes they are overvalued.
- etc.

So after series of comparisons, I hope you can get to know how being a PGP RA has been according to my experience. Who knows this might inspire you to be an RA as well, or the other way round, discourage you.
Or those who are not NUS students, this has been my experience of being an RA.

Thank You