I've worked in boarding schools for my entire adult life. At my first school post-college, I lived in a dorm of eleven girls. My apartment (with two bathrooms, one with a shower and sink, the other with a toilet and sink) made up half of the small building and offered a stunning view of the Hudson River Valley. As my mom told me when she first saw it, I could never have afforded the rent if the rent didn't come in the form of checking in girls, cooking them snacks, catching them when they made anti-school-rule choices, etc. My duty schedule gave me three nights each week and every other weekend of being in charge. Of course, since no other adult lived in the dorm, even when I was off, I was on overnight. I loved getting to know the girls, but I was exhausted all the time.
Then we moved off campus for a few years. During that time, I worked at a couple big public high schools. I couldn't get to know the kids very well seeing them only in classes of thirty to forty students.
We moved back into the boarding school world. At first, when we lived in the dorm, we felt so lucky to have other adults in the building for support, back-up, occasional nights off. But when the opportunity presented itself to move into a house on campus, we took it. At first, I worked as an affiliate, coming into a dorm where I didn't live and running check in so that the residents could have a night off. I felt pretty useless in that role. Then I worked at supervised study hall for a couple years. I didn't like having to put the smack down on kids who were too used to teachers they didn't really know telling them what to do. Finally, I came upon Main Building Duty.
My job here (I'm drafting this while sitting at the senior quad.) is to hang out and talk with kids, to walk around the building seeking out mischief, and to organize the students assigned to help clean up. Maybe I don't get to know the kids as well as their dorm residents do (though the dorms are pretty different these days from how they were when we lived there, so I'm not sure), but I get to be where they are, meeting them not half way but all the way where they are. And I like where they are.
What part(s) of your job are fun? Feel free to write about them in the comments.