Jewel Lo, “Work and Personal Life Boundaries of Resident Assistants”
Mentor: Sarah Riforgiate, Communication
Resident assistants (RAs) support undergraduate students in college residence halls by serving as a resource and mentor to residents while promoting campus rules/policies. RA responsibilities alongside being a full-time student can be a large load, prompting RAs to navigate boundaries between their RA work and personal life. This qualitative study of 11 RAs leverages organizational assimilation theory to explore communication experiences of RAs’ perceptions of personal and professional boundaries. Participants were asked about their experiences and understanding of their position as a RA and how they negotiate work and private life demands using a range of communication strategies. RAs’ experiences of the stages of organizational assimilation shaped how RAs differentiated between student and staff roles. During the vocational anticipatory socialization, RAs who learned about the position from a friend/family member created a more structured schedule between schoolwork, student involvement, and being a RA later in the encounter stage. These RAs’ were able to experience the metamorphosis stage while successfully distinguishing between work/life boundaries. Strategies implemented by RAs included establishing appropriate times for personal breaks and scheduling meetings with residents. These strategies enabled RAs to exit the position with leadership and teamwork skills, while also recommending the position to others. In contrast, RAs who developed expectations through training were not prepared for the time commitment and responsibilities during the encounter stage. As a result, these RAs described high levels of stress, less motivation, and disconnect from their personal lives, which reduced their ability to experience metamorphosis and differentiate their roles as students and staff. These RAs did not recommend being an RA to students and chose not to continue as a RA. Finally, this study offers practical implications to enhance training materials and procedures for RAs to meet personal and professional needs.
Hello there!
My name is Jewel Lo (she/her/hers) and I’m a senior majoring in Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I have been working on this research for about a semester and a half alongside my mentor, Sarah Riforgiate. With my employment at University Housing, I was most interested in researching how RAs navigate their lives between work and personal, while they live where they work. It was a pleasure being mentored by Sarah as she has experience with this research topic and has offered me much guidance throughout this research process. With this being my first involvement with research, I’m glad I was able to learn from Sarah and explore research during my undergrad.
Thank you for taking the time to watch my asynchronous presentation! I would be happy to chat or answer any questions you may have.
Jewel – I love the work you have done. It is great how you are connecting your research to communication theory AND you can offer some practical implications to help resident hall advisers. If you were to do this study again, what might you have done differently knowing what you know now?
Hi Sarah,
Thank you! That is a great question – I think if I were able to do this study again, I would have asked more questions detailing how prepared they felt prior to their position and what that preparation offered them. It could offer more specific needs that RAs seek prior to entering since a lot of the situations they handle require immediate conflict management and are situational. Additionally, I would have been interested to see if one’s culture had any affect on their communication styles as a RA, for example, individualistic and collectivistic cultures. A handful of my participants belonged to collectivistic cultures and it would have been interesting to know if their cultural values had any impact on how their experience was as a RA.
Hi Jewel,
Great presentation! I wouldn’t expect anything less for a Communication student 🙂
I always like to ask “behind the scenes” questions when it comes to research. What is something you learned about qualitative research across the process? What was one challenge you faced and how did you deal with it?
Erin
Hi Erin,
Thank you for your kind words!
Something I learned about qualitative research during this process was how to better conversate with my participants during interviews. Since this was my first time doing undergrad research, I gradually learned how to have conversations with my participants on their experiences rather than read off questions during interviews. Over the course of my interviews, I improved on connecting questions to what the participants were saying, and really feeding in for specific details and experiences. My interviews felt more like conversations and that’s something I learned along the way!
One challenge I faced in this research was navigating through a virtual/online platform. Due to the pandemic, this was a huge challenge since there was a lack of in-person interaction and experiencing technical difficulties every once in awhile. Being someone who enjoys in-person interactions, I would have liked to meet my participants in person and have a conversation about their experiences. Luckily, interviews were done on Microsoft Teams, so there wasn’t a lack of face-to-face interaction and helped substitute for this missing aspect. I was able to catch their expressions when they talked about stories of when they were RAs and read their body language and gestures when answering specific questions. Although it was a slight road block having to learn new online tools, I was still able to create an open and comfortable space for the participant.
Very nice, Jewel! I didn’t know anything really about organization assimilation theory before and found your presentation clear, interesting, and relevant, and I know I will be thinking about it, and about how people join, succeed in, and leave organizations in a very different way. Thank you!!
Hi Nigel,
Thank you so much, I really appreciate the time you took to listen to my presentation! I’m glad you were able to learn about organization assimilation theory and provided you a different perspective!