The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 3 - 20

Mimi Benjamin * Laura Davis

Recognizing critical situations and expecting themselves to respond because of their
RA knowledge surfaced as learning for these
students.

Teamwork. Teamwork was another central
category but also something distinctly different from interpersonal skills. Whereas interpersonal skills involved an element of working
with others through individual interactions,
RAs commented separately about the experience of working with others as part of a staff
team. They noted the importance of having a
strong staff team and the team being a source
of support, which Lynn's statement sums up:
"I learned how to depend on others."
RAs also noted that a strong staff team involved respect and accountability. They commented on balancing the friend/co-worker
dynamic, which Rory noted: "In regards to coworkers, I learned that even though you want
to be friends with them, you have to hold them
accountable for their actions and approach
them about it if it is an issue."
Perhaps the strongest takeaway concerning
teamwork was the high value RAs placed on
learning about different work styles: both how
to work with others who approach things differently as well as the overall team experience,
making them realize that there are many ways
to accomplish a given task. Lane highlighted
these differences: "I learned to appreciate work
ethics and supervisory styles that are drastically different than my own." And Alex indicated,
I learned more about collaboration with my
coworkers. I realized that other people have
valuable opinions and experiences that can
help make my work better and that they
might have ideas that I had not thought of in
the past. I used to like doing things by myself
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because I felt like other people couldn't do
things the way that I felt was best, but that
might not be the only way to do things.
In the reflection below, Taylor considered
the teamwork experience and integrated it with
concurrent academic experiences:
I have developed a sense of what type of team
I'd like to be on, which is something I rarely
considered before becoming an RA. I think
I've learned a lot about collaboration from
the position as well as from my education on
human resources and organizational behavior.
It was interesting to see the concepts I learned
come alive. I used to never appreciate those
subject areas until I became an RA. Ultimately,
I'm walking away with a better understanding
of how leadership and motivation works.
This teamwork learning clearly resonated as an
important element of the RA experience.

Self-efficacy. The final category that
emerged was self-efficacy, broadly used to
describe the RAs' recognition of their own
growth, increased self-confidence and confidence from increased skill competency, and
their understanding of their own limitations
as an element of self-care. RAs articulated increased confidence in their abilities in the position or a sense of increased self-confidence
overall. After responding to a crisis, Denise
shared, "I went into the situation concerned that
I wasn't doing the right thing, but I emerged
feeling confident and that I was ready to complete this job." In response to the RA position
overall, Marley said he learned "that I am a
leader. I never really thought of myself as one,
but people do listen to me, and people do ask
me for advice," while Jordan stated, "I learned
that I could really handle intense issues in the
building even though I had often doubted my

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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 3

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