Introduction
For many prospective graduate students, a live-in assistantship is a great opportunity – providing housing, financial relief, and professional development. However, for those with a spouse or partner, the experience of moving on-campus can come with unique challenges. Balancing academic responsibilities, job expectations, and your personal wellbeing is already difficult, but doing so in a living space shared with students. adds elements that are both enriching and demanding. You want to be a good worker, a good student, a good person, and a good partner.
This piece explores the realities of graduate students navigating the demands of residence life alongside a live-in partner. Establishing boundaries, supporting each other as you adjust to the new space while you fulfill your role, and navigating time constraints are a few of the challenges to come. Through my lived experience, we’ll examine the benefits, struggles, and discuss strategies that help couples survive and thrive in this setting.
Role of a Graduate Student in Residence Life
Graduate Assistants (GAs) play a crucial role in the day-to-day operations of their communities. Working between 20-25 hours a week, sometimes more depending on crisis response issues, facilities concerns, or busy times during move-in and move-out, GAs focus on community development, supervision and staff development, administrative duties, and crisis and on-call response. What has been the largest parts of my experience as a GA is training and supervising undergraduate staff, serving as on-call crisis responder for mental health concerns, conflicts, and emergencies, and assisting in day-to-day residence hall operations. There is a lot that can fill the 25 hours and sometimes days and weeks look entirely different from each other.
A big part of being a GA is your role as a graduate student. Classes, whether in-person or online, can be long and demanding. While it is the primary reason we are on campus, classes can oftentimes feel less important than our assistantship work. Outside of class, a lot of our time is filled with assistantship work. It can be difficult to carve out the proper amount of time to do your readings, writing assignments, and other duties for your degree.
In totality, the life of a GA can be taxing. Work all day, go to class in the evening, study/read at night, and maybe find time for selfcare. This alone can be a lot to handle, but if you have a live-in partner there’s an added stress to “show up” at home. All of this goes on at the same time as life. A life you are sharing with another person.
Impact on Partner or Spouse
Before I jump into the impact on a partner or spouse, I would like to provide some background on my specific situation. My wife Taylee and I were married in 2022 and lived together an entire year before moving on-campus for my live-in graduate position in 2023. We rented a three-bedroom, one-bathroom house. As you can imagine, the amenities were great: in-unit laundry, space, a dishwasher, space, parking right outside our front door, SPACE, etc. We loved where we lived and would not have left if this current opportunity did not come up.
We moved from our house into a two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment. I won’t lie, it was a nice apartment. It was, however, an adjustment moving back onto a college campus. The two of us had both recently lived on-campus as undergraduate students, so we didn’t put much thought into what it would be like to go back.
It’s a weird position to be in: you live on a campus because your partner or spouse has a job there. Odds are you live in the community where your partner works. Housing professionals use the phrase “living in a bubble” to describe a feeling of always being watched – by residents, by facilities staff, and so on. There’s a sense of anxiety around knowing you can never turn off completely.
This also exists for your partner. When I asked my wife Taylee about her experience, she spoke about imposter syndrome and how it feels weird to be a plus one at home. I am the one who coordinates maintenance requests, does laundry, and works with the housing department for anything related to our space. This is for no other reason than that I know who to reach out to for quick results. While helpful, Taylee feels a disconnect from decisions being made.
Benefits and Opportunities
Living and working on-campus is amazing. Economically alone it is worth all that comes with it. Every month two paychecks hit, and nothing leaves for rent or utilities. There is also the added benefit of not commuting to work. Additionally, you come in with a cohort and have a sort of built-in community. Thankfully for us, we have found that community amongst my cohort members and friends Taylee has made at work.
There are lots of advantages to the short commute to work when living on-campus. You do not have to find a parking spot or spend a lot on gas going to and from work. You can sleep in longer than if you had a drive to get to the office. Another aspect of being in such close proximity how quickly you can run home if there is ever an emergency.
A benefit that I feel often gets overlooked is access to campus maintenance. Whenever anything breaks in the apartment, I will put in a maintenance ticket and within a few hours I have someone in my apartment fixing the problem. From a clogged drain to a bug infestation, facilities staff show up for anything.
Connecting with others in a new place can be difficult and scary. Thankfully when living with a partner, you have someone with you, but the two of you still need a sense of belonging wherever you go. Other housing grads can help with this transition. As far as the social aspect, we both get along great with the other grads in my program. One thing that we did not expect when moving on-campus was the community that came with it. The day we moved there were other housing grads looking to connect. We ended up not being the only married couple either. Thankfully, we found our community on campus.
Challenges
The move from a house to an on-campus apartment in a residential community was difficult. It was tough to lose the privacy, space, and quiet of our house and move back onto a college campus. While the benefits and opportunities presented to us were incredible, there were still growing pains while we adjusted to our new space. The biggest piece of advice we can give is, protect your time when you are not working. This was my first time working for residence life. Having never worked a live-in position or supervised staff, there was a large adjustment period for me.
My first month was training for myself, then the next two weeks were spent training my staff. After that our housing team jumped directly into move-in. Directly after move-in, classes start. There are days when you will wake up and go to work, class, and then work more after class – all the while still needing to be a good partner. So much of your time will be dedicated to your work and degree. Take the down time when it comes. If it is not urgent and important, it can wait. Setting boundaries, the same way we encourage our residents to do, is important in navigating a space comfortably.
I set hard boundaries with my staff early on about after-hours work. I want to make sure that home feels like home and my wife is never put in an awkward position. My team has been receptive to respecting our privacy by not calling after hours or knocking on our door. It is very important to set expectations early. Unfortunately, situations are going to arise with noisy neighbors. How to handle it should be a conversation with you and your partner. Taylee and I decided that I would knock on doors and communicate, since community management is part of my job. We also interact with our neighbors as little as possible. I’m pretty sure that our current neighbors don’t even know who I am (that was our goal). However, that may look different couple to couple.
Not every graduate apartment is created equally. Our first apartment was giant with a double vanity. Our new apartment has a smaller bathroom and kitchen space. Another fact to consider is who lives in the building with you. Do you live close to your supervisor? How about your RA staff? How close is your living space to your office? Is your apartment on a floor with residents or is it separate? Is there someone living above you who likes bouncing a basketball? Do resident know how to find your apartment? All of this could create trouble separating work and your home life.
Communication with your partner is paramount. Taylee has my schedule, and I put everything on it from class, work hours, meetings, social events, and on-call shifts. It is important to us that she know when I am going to be away so that she can plan to do other things. It can be an isolating feeling living on a campus because of your partner’s work. We try to combat this by overcommunicating and budgeting out time to show up for each other.
If work-life balance really exists, being a graduate student working in residence life is the furthest thing from it. You work your days, go to class in the evenings, do schoolwork at night, and repeat. Sprinkle in week and weekend on-call shifts and after hours work commitments like staff meetings and there goes your time. Showing up as a worker, a student, and a partner can feel impossible at times. But there are some strategies I can recommend in the next section.
Advice
So, how do you make it work? Again, this is informed by personality, communication, and every relationship is different. Still, there are three essential bits of advice I cannot stress enough: find out the needs of your partner, know who is on your team, and think ahead about your summer.
Find out what your partner needs!
Whether it is a parking spot or a dog or anything else, ask what your partner needs and attempt to negotiate for it. There’s no guarantee you’ll get everything (or anything), but it goes a long way if you can advocate for your partner early on and on an ongoing basis. Taylee and I did not think ahead enough about what we could do to make her comfortable in this new living situation. For example, we did not realize until after moving in how tricky it is to get a pet. If we had started the process when I accepted the position in February, we would have had a dog with us by the time we moved in in July.
Know who is on your team!
When I left for the summer to work as the Orientation Intern for TCU, the Director of Housing made sure the move would be taken care of for Taylee. The way it is usually done for grads being moved over the summer did not work for us, as Taylee was still living at Clemson. Having the Director there to help was huge for us. When we had major maintenance issues in our apartment, the Director again stepped in and worked to find a solution for us. Knowing and utilizing the people who are willing to advocate for you is essential to making life better on-campus.
Think ahead about your summer!
Being a graduate student on a 10-month contract, I needed to find work for the two months I was not employed by Clemson Home. I chose NODA. This meant I would be leaving for two months to work at another institution, and Taylee would be staying behind so she could continue working. Now thankfully, the Director of Clemson Home worked very hard to accommodate our situation and was able to move us directly from our first-year apartment to my new community’s apartment. The biggest issue was, I would not be there for the move. I did what I could to pack up anything and everything she would not use while I was gone to help, but that doesn’t change the fact that a lot of the packing and the actual stress of the move was on Taylee. This is something to keep in mind for graduate students with a live-in partner. You may leave for a summer internship and your partner may not be able to come. This is a conversation that should happen before the start of a program, not during.
Conclusion
Taylee and I came into this situation as ill-prepared as possible. Having no housing experience, we did not know the right questions to ask or the best ways to prepare. It took time, but the two of us managed to discover the best ways to support each other through this. This is just how it looks for us, it may look entirely different for you and your partner. Below are some discussion questions for you and your partner to help guide conversations about what the space will look like.
- What does your partner need out of the space? (pet, parking spot, etc.)
- Is the position 9-month, 10-month, or 12-month? What do you want out of the summer between first and second year? (ACUHO-I, NODA, etc.)
- How are you going to support each other with the long work hours and classes?
- How will you actively protect your time-off and what do boundaries look like with work?
Allen Geiger III (He/Him/His) is a second-year graduate student in the Masters of Student Affairs in Higher Education – Counselor Education at Clemson University with experience in Residence Life, Orientation, and Career Services. He is pursuing a career in housing after graduation. Additionally, he is grateful to his wife Taylee for making this article possible and looks forward to getting a dog with her ASAP.