Being a student worker for a housing department is both a high demand and high pressure environment. It requires extreme prioritizing, balancing, and accountability. While there can be considerable perks, your education and long-term health and goals should come first. It’s safe to say that being a Resident Advisor (or whatever your institution may call the role) is not for everyone, especially as it requires a great deal of commitment and will, without a doubt, impact different aspects of your life. There is no shame in realizing that this job is not sustainable for you, regardless of the reason why.
Reasons for Leaving
There are three common reasons that students leave an RA position, though the possibilities are not limited to these:
- Negative impact on mental health. Being an RA not only puts students under the stress of having to balance work, school and a social life, but also requires a great deal of emotional energy. RA’s are responsible for ensuring the welfare of a group of residents. An RA will typically be responsible for 20-30 residents, and they can be the first person these residents go to when they are struggling with something. It’s unfortunately common for RAs to suffer from empathy burnout, which is caused by consistently experiencing and absorbing emotional distress from others. This can lead to symptoms such as emotional dysregulation and exhaustion, detachment, headaches and fatigue, and even difficulty concentrating.
- Negative impact on academics. Due to the increased responsibilities, some students find that their academic performance declines after they begin working as an RA. Additionally, the on call aspect of being an RA can have a negative impact on academic performance in the short term. For example if an RA is dealing with an incident until the early hours of the morning, they may not be able to complete their coursework to the best of their abilities. Most housing departments will have a minimum GPA requirement in order to ensure their RAs are students first. However, many students will have other GPA requirements that they need to keep in mind, such as scholarship requirements or maintaining a GPA that meets graduate, medical or law school requirements.
- Negative impact on social life. Being an RA means being a representative of a university, so it comes with high expectations regarding a student’s conduct and behavior both on and off the clock. One of the more difficult aspects of being an RA is that you are never not an RA. Students that become RAs quickly become recognized figures both on and around their campus, which puts them under extra scrutiny. Additionally, breaking University policy can come with more severe consequences for RAs than regular students, and can quickly lead to losing their position. For some people this level of restriction or consequences is not worth the benefits that being an RA can bring.
Before You Go…
Ask yourself if the issue you are having is something that could potentially be resolved. Whether that is by taking action yourself, or by communicating with your supervisor, peers, or other advisor to develop a plan of action to help alleviate whatever problem you are struggling with. However, if this problem is something that cannot be fixed while you are in the RA position, or the problem would require too much time to fix, then there is no shame in leaving. Being an RA is a difficult job to manage on top of balancing academics and a social life. It is definitely not something that should have an overall or long-term negative impact on you.
