“Achieving Life Balance as a Work-Study Student During the Pandemic” by Miguel Giral

 

As I sat in my house writing a similar blog post last semester, I would not have expected that I would be at Hofstra just a few months later attending some in-person classes and working two jobs on campus. My pessimistic self-imagined that our nation would take a lot longer to solve some of the problems that were thrown at us by the COVID-19 pandemic. Nonetheless, the Hofstra environment has definitely changed and it is odd walking around and seeing people wearing masks and being so far away from one another, but the students and faculty seem to be working together to adjust to this idea of a “new normal.” Ultimately, there have been some things that Hofstra has done well and some things that it could improve on, but this is an experience that very few of us will ever forget.

For starters, I was fortunate enough to continue to work at the Center for “Race,” Culture, and Social Justice this semester even though we did not know that would be possible to due the conditions at hand. It has been interesting working office hours in a room that nobody ever goes into anymore and hosting events that are all held via zoom. There is a certain vibe that one gets when being in a big lecture hall listening to panelists from around the country come to talk in these events versus just sitting in my dorm room staring at my laptop screen. I am glad that we are still able to host some of these events and at every event, we have a good number of students come and watch. In a way, it is better that these events are online because previously some students could not physically stop by to watch the in-person events, so now they have access to the zoom meetings from anywhere they may be.

Furthermore, working here has made me more conscious of the situation in Colombia from a larger scale. I am well aware of what my family members have been experiencing there, but here I can do some more research about politics and the nationwide struggles rather than just hearing about it from my aunts and cousins. Unfortunately, at the beginning of the COVID outbreak, Colombia was doing well by keeping people safe and quarantining, but recently there has been a spike in deaths and cases. As the United States improves, it seems like Colombia is getting worse and running out of resources more and more as the days go by. It has gotten to the point where the CDC has warned the nation and given Colombia a level 3 warning, which is the highest level of risk people could be at for getting infected. Despite having to slightly adjust the way we do some things at the Center; it has been good to be back and working here on campus and getting to attend some of these events more frequently.

Apart from being a student fellow at the center, I am also a Hofstra Pride Guide. This requires me to do some administrative office work in the Admissions office, but most importantly it gives me the platform to give families tours of the campus with hopes that they end up coming to Hofstra in the upcoming years. To put into perspective the importance of these tours, while I was interviewing and being trained for the position, I was told these were “million-dollar tours.” At first, I did not understand, but they told me that there will be times where I will be in charge of 3 or 4 families at a time, which would mean that if they all end up choosing Hofstra, their tuitions will add up to around a million dollars. It did seem like some added pressure at first, but now I love to go out and meet these individual families and help these students on their journey to becoming college students, similarly to how other students helped me when I still in high school. Due to some safety precautions, tours have been very different than last year. For instance, an individual pride guide cannot take out as many families on tours and we cannot show families the residentials dorms or take them into most buildings.

Personally, the most difficult thing for me has been talking for hours with a mask and trying to build a relationship with people who cannot see most of my face. Moreover, a lot of these families and students have been attending virtual tours from their homes which is good and bad. Good because we have gotten more families to visit from out of state without having to worry about traveling so much, but it is bad because they do not get to actually see the campus and get a sense of the size of things and the overall ambiance that one gets at Hofstra. I am still glad, however, that I can work at both of these places and get to build relationships with the directors and coworkers even during this weird time in our world.

In addition, one of the personal things that has been difficult to deal with or adjust to has definitely been life as a residential student. The best part of that for me was always being able to hang out with friends and get together in one another’s rooms to eat, play video games, or even to study. Now due to some understandable regulations, they have limited those interactions almost entirely which is truly disheartening because there is no break from school it seems. It feels like even in my free time all I can think about is when my next assignment is due or when I have my next test, which was not the feeling I had my first semester and a half here.

Miguel Giral is a sophomore, part of the NOAH program, and served as a Student Fellow at the Center for “Race,” Culture and Social Justice.