SJU Jr Co-Op Student Discusses Transition Back

A Saint Joseph’s Marketing major- class of 2023 shares her the difficulties of working full time as a student. Since the pandemic made everything virtual, there was a lack of experience as she was preparing to start her work term.

More videos like this one can be found at http://transition.starttalkingsju.com. You can also see our prior campaigns: Living in Fear, Striving for Hope, Attacked, Belonging, and Mental Health.

This video was co-created with the person depicted who reviewed and signed a consent form granting permission to share this story online.

If you are experiencing any personal or social effects due to COVID and/or a return to campus life, the university has resources that can help, including:

The Office of Student Outreach and Support
the SJU COVID website;
HawkHub, if you are experiencing food insecurity;
The Bias Activity Review Group, which connects to Public Safety;
Counseling and Psychological Support (CAPS; 610-660-1090)
TitleIX titleIX@sju.edu
REPP (*confidential support) 610-733-9650 (24 hr. Peer Helpline)
SJU Public Safety 610-660-1111.

A complete transcript of the video reads as follows:

“Hi. I’m a junior at St Joe’s, I’m originally from Central Jersey, Princeton, New Jersey. In my opinion, I don’t think that the teachers were as lenient as they were in the spring. So that was like, Oh my God, how do I like…

How do I accommodate myself to these classes? And, it was definitely a challenge. And, you know, we all did it, we all were going through the same thing, the Co-op since there’s not many of us. So it’s kind of like a really nice community and we’re all going through the same thing.

Even though you have different majors for me in particular, my roommate was also a co-op. She is a co-op, but she was doing those classes with me and we were able to communicate about that and collaborate. So that was really I really appreciated having her.

And also, like since everybody was in the same boat, we were all really appreciative of everybody trying to help one another. And so we completed those summer classes and then we went into a virtual work term, and that was interesting.

So since that was my first work term, I, it was just online. It was almost like you had class every day and I already had experience with that from the summer and the spring. So that wasn’t particularly hard.

However, the hardest thing about it was not being able to get that like personal connection with my coworkers, as well as like my supervisors and my bosses. So learning the job virtually was like it wasn’t necessarily so hard, but the fact that you were by yourself, like I did my job, like from my apartment.

So basically, if I had a question, I had to reach out to my supervisor. Like the other platform, we used to communicate with one another for help because you want people to think that you know what you’re doing and that like, you’re competent enough to do so.”