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Self-CARE: How to Manage Emotional Labor as Student Leaders

Citation:

Kimaya Cole. 5/9/2019. “Self-CARE: How to Manage Emotional Labor as Student Leaders”. Type of Work: SOCIOL1130 Spring 2019 course research project.
soc1130_action_research_design-kimaya_cole.pdf261 KB

Abstract:

As the Director of Operations for CARE (Consent Advocates and Relationship Educators), my main responsibilities, in addition to facilitating educational workshops to students that all CAREs take part in, include acting as a liaison between administrators, faculty, deans, and tutors who want to work with CARE and accept, decline, or consider requests for co-sponsorship and event help depending on CAREs’ capacities. This role is rewarding but also challenging. The purpose of this study was to examine how leaders in peer-education and peer-counseling groups balance the emotional labor needed to accomplish all of their role’s responsibilities and tend to other members, all while leaving time for self-care. The sample for this study consisted of Harvard University peer-education and peer-counseling group affiliations, including 2 CARE supervisors and 18 students. Data was collected through a qualitative survey and in-depth interviews. I found three main findings: (1) Emotional Activation is mainly spurred by the consistent type of work and content members interact with when being a resource for their fellow peers; (2) Emotionally-activating work can easily cause burnout of members because it is difficult to stay invested in the well-being of peers when it is often a one-way relationship and little explicit measure of impact; and (3) An individual’s ability to handle the emotional activation from their work and still perform at their best is dependent on how much self-care they do outside of their organization.