<![CDATA[Student mentors (musyrif) in Islamic residential higher education combine academic, religious, disciplinary, and relational responsibilities within a shared living environment. This interpretive qualitative study examined how male musyrif understood responsibility, managed strain, and navigated institutional support in one Indonesian ma’had al-jami’ah. Fourteen mentors aged 20–22 years, with 8–24 months of mentoring experience, completed semi-structured interviews, supplemented by 12 non-participant observation sessions conducted from September to December 2025. Reflexive thematic analysis generated eight interrelated themes concerning role enactment, academic balance, coping, motivation, peer support, experiential learning, structural barriers, and proposed improvements. Participants described negotiating ambiguous boundaries while balancing university study with worship facilitation, academic guidance, discipline, and informal emotional support. Scheduling, recreation, family contact, religious meaning, and peer solidarity helped sustain participation, while material-welfare concerns, workload, and inconsistent supervision constrained the role. Situated learning, self-determination theory, and ecological systems theory were used post-analytically to interpret role learning, motivational regulation, and contextual conditions. Resilience is therefore understood as relational and context-dependent rather than as individual endurance. These findings highlight the need for Islamic residential higher education institutions to strengthen role clarity, supervisory structures, peer-support mechanisms, and material welfare in order to sustain mentor well-being and improve the quality of residential student development.]]>
