Originally written for Journalism 414 (Magazine and Feature Writing) class

It’s 8 p.m. on a Tuesday night, and sixteen people are gathered in the Massey Hall lounge for a staff meeting. Hannah Thurauf stands at the front of the table, iPad in hand, pulling something up on the screen. She smiles as she turns it around to face the staff, revealing a Skype call with her mother and her beloved Schnauzer Poodle mix named Millie.

Each staff member takes a turn with the iPad, laughing while saying a quick “hello” to the dog on the screen. The 15-year-old Schnoodle is a constant topic of conversation around the building. Hannah is a dog lover, and she would be the first to tell you.

The Massey Hall staff would probably be the second, third and fourth.

Hannah works as an assistant hall director in Massey, a unique employment option around the University of Tennessee, because it means she is both a graduate student and a leader in University Housing.

Originally from St. Louis, Missouri, Hannah decided to apply for the job while she completed her senior year of undergrad at the University of Dayton in Ohio in 2015.

For Hannah, it was a chance to take the familiar and make it new again.

“I was part of housing for two years in my undergrad, and I just didn’t feel like my time with housing was done yet,” she said. “I just wanted to try a new role and get to work with resident assistants, because I was an RA.”

While the assistant hall director role is vital in the residence hall, it is one that many students may not even know anything about.

Hannah makes it her mission to be visible around Massey, because she thinks it is important to establish that relationship with the 580 students who call it home.

“What I really like is that a lot of residents feel really comfortable coming in and saying ‘hi,’” Hannah said. “It’s really great to just communicate with them and see how their day is going.”

What she likes about her job is that every day is different.

However, every day is usually busy.

“Every day I do a couple of office hours, I’ll have a few one-on-one meetings with some RAs. If there’s a staff meeting, I’ll go to that,” Hannah said. “Some days you might work with your hall council or schedule with office assistants.”

As an assistant hall director, Hannah works with the resident assistants and is directly in charge of Massey Hall Council, who work together to plan programs for the building, and her staff of ten office assistants, who work at the front desk and post office during the day.

Office Assistant Jacob Watts says the best part about working for Hannah is her sense of humor.

“She is always organized and does her job, but she’s also easy to talk to,” Watts said. “She’s funny; she’s a dog lover. That’s all stuff that comes up with her on a regular basis with her around the office.”

Even though it may seem like a lot to deal with at one time, Hannah says communication is the key to success when it comes to keeping track of her committees.

In particular, she credits group messages and the GroupMe app for keeping everyone on the same page.

Fiona Whitaker has worked with Hannah for the past two years. Last year, she was a member of Massey Hall Council, and now she serves as an RA in the same building.

Whitaker said this commitment to being there for everyone at all times is what sets Hannah apart.

“It’s so obvious when you’re working with Hannah that she cares,” Whitaker said. “She wants to do whatever she can to help, and you always know she’ll find a way to do it.”

Hannah hopes this translates into the other parts of her life, too.

When she’s not busy saving the residents of Massey from rogue mice or nuisance alarms, she’s spending the week in the Haslam College of Business for her final semester of graduate school.

It’s not the path she thought she would take.

She said she left the University of Dayton with the intention of starting everything anew.

“I picked UT because I wanted a large school in a different state,” Hannah said. “I wanted to try living in a different environment and going to a big state school.”

In her undergraduate career, Hannah studied education and planned on becoming a teacher. However, she found that her passions were elsewhere: human resources.

“What I would really like to do with HR is training and development, because I really enjoy working with different teams and looking at ways we can enhance their skills and improve their training processes,” Hannah said.

She’s gotten some training under her belt with committees at work, but she gets even more three days a week she spends at Denso in Maryville, Tennessee.

Hannah interns in the associate relations department, where she acts as a liaison to the employees and the manager.

While it’s necessary for her to have the internship to graduate, Hannah also appreciates that she gets to be hands-on in her field before she steps across the stage to get her diploma.

“HR is such a cool field, because there’s so much you can do with it,” Hannah said, “and I get to do so much of it with Denso.”

When she graduates in May, Hannah plans on moving to Greeneville, South Carolina with her boyfriend Alex and their new rescue Schnoodle named Wiley who, Hannah insists, is not a South Carolina Millie replacement, but another addition to the family.

Still, she says it will be hard to leave because she loves the UT spirit and all of the students she gets to worth with on a daily basis.

The students and staff will also feel that loss.

In May 2017, Hannah was awarded the Graduate Assistant of the Year Award at out of the 17 current graduate students working in University Housing.

Those who know her were not the least bit surprised.

“Hannah is wonderful in every way possible,” Whitaker said.