By Narra Georges
“Am I doing enough on my part in creating that happy, healthy, and safe life for those people in my life?”
“Has anything exciting happened to you this year?”
“Something exciting has happened to me this year. For the past little over a year and a half I’ve been serving as the Career & Peer Mentor Coordinator in the Expanding Horizons TRIO program here at Fitchburg State. A couple of months ago, I was approached by the Assistant Dean of Student & Academic Life who was filling in at the time as our Interim Director of Expanding Horizons. He had offered me to fill in as the Interim Director while we were continuing the search to find a permanent director. This has been an incredible opportunity for me because I have so much passion, knowledge, and interest in furthering the mission and seeing out the successes of students in the Expanding Horizons program. It’s been a really exciting opportunity for me to see this side of the planning and implementing of services for students.”
“How does it feel to have such a demanding position?”
“Being the Interim Director of Expanding Horizons is definitely a time commitment. It’s definitely challenged my ability to manage time and the obligations that I have in both my personal life and with my job and my career. It’s actually a really good lesson for me. I find that whenever I’m working with my students, I like to be able to share personal experiences. So having this challenge, and it really has been an added challenge being in such a demanding position, but being able utilize those experiences to better inform my students about how they can manage their time is something that I find extremely helpful. I’ve just been able to implement different strategies in managing the time because it is a more demanding position and a lot of the reason it is demanding it because they are new job requirements and experiences. Both on the campus and in the program. So as new tasks are coming along, I do have an obligation to put more of an effort and time into it. So it’s just about balancing that out with all the other obligations that I have.”
“What worries you the most in life?”
“I feel very blessed in my life to have a lot of people in my life who I care very much about and that includes friends, family, my students, and various relationships in my life. One of the biggest things that I worry about is how all those people that I care about so much are and continue to be happy, healthy, and going places in their life that they’re working hard to get towards. Along with that, I always ask myself, “Am I doing enough on my part in creating that happy, healthy, and safe life for those people in my life?”