Sebastian Morales
Miami, Florida
8:30 a.m. Friday, March 27

Zoom allows me to keep my work-study position and work from home

While full-time University of Miami professors and staff probably knew they would have a job during the coronavirus pandemic, many student employees did not.

With the campus closed, student employment positions disappeared.

However, I was fortunate to get an offer from my supervisor to keep my federal work-study position as a lab assistant in the modern languages laboratory in the Merrick Building.

And I am able to work from home, fulfilling my lab assistant role online.

I have been working at the Eleonore Graves Tripp Modern Languages Laboratory since fall semester. Most days I would make sure visiting students treated the computers properly and were able to navigate the resources successfully. When needed, I helped Spanish professors manage their Skype “VIP sessions” with classrooms from other countries.

Now that I am working from home, I do not have to wake up two hours prior and drive 30-40 minutes to campus; I just set an alarm 15 minutes prior to my scheduled Zoom shift.

I no longer have to attend to 20 students or more in the lab. Now I get a couple of students here or there who accidentally get to my Zoom room thinking it is their class. I somehow feel unproductive since the number of people I can help in a day has gone to virtually zero.

My employment situation worked out for me, although I am working one hour less a week.

One of my friends also fared well and is working directly with IT, performing similar tasks. But another friend who worked at the Richter Libray, even during spring break, has not heard back from her superiors yet.

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