The Emotional Labour of Student Leadership

Leadership that doesn’t pay, that isn’t valued, and that is for your peers. A great line on a resumé, but who really gives a shit?

Kelly Kitagawa
Jul 25, 2017 · 3 min read

I woke up myself and my partner at 8:00am for an interview with someone on the school paper on a day I didn’t have class, ready for a day of meetings, catching up on weeks of class work and my part time job. I spent 12 hours on campus that day, and made about 30$. And that’s a pretty average day for a student leader.

Various elections run for nearly half of the year on Ryerson University campus, whether for Senate, Board of Governors, Societies, Course Unions, Student Groups or the Student Union: we get it, you’re annoyed at how many posters/social media posts you see. But remember that the people on those posters are exactly like the average student with something that has driven them to do more. Maybe they had a bad first year, or a terrible experience with mental health services on campus, but at the end of they day, they are students too. And they want to make the community better.

That means they could be in your class, in your friend group or on tinder. It means they commute or have ridiculous rent to pay. It means they this beautifully naïve idea that they could make a difference. And they can. They control hundreds of thousands of dollars, they initiate protests, events and campaigns and they even yell at the people grading them on your behalf. And this takes its toll.

This system that pits students against each other in literal popularity contests for jobs that don’t pay, is the result of the business of higher education. Universities need to have extracurricular programs on paper, but often rely on student initiatives to actually appeal to students and work with students. The results? Here’s an actual ad for the Faculty of Communication and Design that features 80% student run initiatives:

This isn’t to say the University doesn’t provide any resources for these groups to exist, but it does take the credit for the hard work of students. And for some reason, success at these unpaid positions does not equal success in the eyes of the University. Instead, it’s advertised as “the rich student life on campus” and exclusively chooses to celebrate the students that don’t invest in their own community. An external job definitely means you’ve succeeded, but a job that puts all your work back into the community, oh we’ll take credit for that, thanks for the free programming.

However, there is a reward in student leadership. The single reward of student leadership is watching your peers get something out of your work. Hearing someone met their best friend or partner at frosh, that their favourite sweater is one you helped bring into existence or that they got an internship out of an event you planned. It’s about seeing your work translated into happiness, and sometimes it takes away from your own.

This past year, I have never felt more emotionally exhausted than from my student leadership roles. They consumed most of my day because meetings often can’t take place during regular hours because people have class, which made for early mornings and late nights. Which, as a student, that’s usually reserved for social time. I distanced myself from friends due to never having time for them and various conflicts. I was 24/7 support to students who asked for guidance after exhausting other resources. I made decision after decision that never pleased everyone. Short on money, time, space and resources, there’s not much to do to encourage this unrelenting hard work.

My colleagues became my greatest support system, and to that I owe them the world. I’ve had the honour to work alongside phenomenal people who’ve challenged me and supported me through everything.

I find myself unable to forget the problems that exist in the community I’ve put my everything into, and I really shouldn’t be surprised. So I want to remain critical of the school I’ve called home and really, the group of people closest to my heart.

Post-secondary institutions need to stop outsourcing emotional labour to their already stressed and financially strained students. If you want a rich student life on campus to advertise to investors; find a way to pay for it.

Kelly Kitagawa

Written by

Director, Content Creator, Feminist and Leader. Let's talk about education, online media, mental health and equity. http://youtube.com/kelzell

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