Item

Sanaa Abid Oral History, 2021/11/29

Media

Title (Dublin Core)

Sanaa Abid Oral History, 2021/11/29
Zaragoza Team Leader Interview with Sanaa Abid

Disclaimer (Dublin Core)

DISCLAIMER: This item may have been submitted in response to a school assignment prompt. See Linked Data.

Description (Dublin Core)

This is an audio interview of Zaragoza director Sanaa Abid. She gave a behind the scenes looks into how the student orientation was organized working with other campus facilities to ensure a safe program for students and parents. She offered insight as her roles from a new student, a student leader, and a student director.

From this interview, we are able to gain a better understanding of what the directors did during Zaragoza and how they accommodated to Covid-19. Students were able to still have an experience that allowed them to connect with other students and their families while still having a safe experience. From this interview, we can tell that the St. Mary’s Community came together to understand the different actions that were taken to ensure the program ran smoothly. Furthermore, Sanaa offered her unique experience from attending Zaragoza as a new student prior to Covid, a first time Zaragoza leader during 2020, and finally as Zaragoza Director during the summer of 2021.

Recording Date (Dublin Core)

Creator (Dublin Core)

Contributor (Dublin Core)

Event Identifier (Dublin Core)

Partner (Dublin Core)

Type (Dublin Core)

oral history

Controlled Vocabulary (Dublin Core)

Curator's Tags (Omeka Classic)

Contributor's Tags (a true folksonomy) (Friend of a Friend)

Collection (Dublin Core)

Curatorial Notes (Dublin Core)

Date Submitted (Dublin Core)

11/29/2021

Date Modified (Dublin Core)

12/02/2021
12/07/2021

Interviewer (Bibliographic Ontology)

Alicia Martinez

Interviewee (Bibliographic Ontology)

Sanaa Abid

Transcription (Omeka Classic)

Alicia Martinez 0:03
Awesome. Um, so how are you doing?

Sanaa Abid 0:06
Good, how are you?

Alicia Martinez 0:07
I'm doing good. Thank you for asking. So I'm basically I'm just going to be interviewing you about your experience as a Zaragoza student leader during during the summer of 2021. Just to get a feel of what the university did and just to ensure safety for students and parents and to students as well, regarding the pandemic.

Alright, perfect. So just the first question, if you could, like state your name major and the year that you are graduating.

Sanaa Abid 0:40
Okay, so my name is Santa Abid. I am a junior biology major, and I'm graduating 2023, spring 2023.

Alicia Martinez 0:51
What was your position during Zaragoza

Sanaa Abid 0:56
I started as a Zaragoza leader, and I am currently a Zaragoza director and I was the director for summer of 2021.

Alicia Martinez 1:03
Cool, I know what is your role as a director?

Sanaa Abid 1:07
I am one of the people who tend the entire Zaragoza program. I'm also in charge of the leaders that we have this past summer, and just in charge of making sure everything's going well during the Zaragoza days.

Alicia Martinez 1:25
Alright perfect. And oh, what did you learn or do as a leader to ensure safety for students and parents during the orientation process.

Sanaa Abid 1:36
So before Zaragoza happened this past summer, we were we were planning for an orientation that was going to be mass free and no restrictions as that was the end. But then the COVID variant happened and St. Mary's was under massive restriction again. So we had to accommodate very last minute for Zaragoza. So what we were able to do was meant masks for everybody parents and students and leaders. social distancing. So that was that was the main way we were able to have all of these sessions happening. So because the social distancing was in effect, we had to increase the number of Zaragoza days that we had. So usually in the past before COVID happened, we would have one or two days for Zaragoza. But this time around this past summer, we had six separate days of the same program, just so that we could accommodate everyone but a few numbers every single day. We also had to deal with social restrictions in the fact that we had to find spaces on campus for parents and students to be able to fit in the same room while still maintaining that distance. So there's a lot of different different things that we included. Also. Our lunches were grabbing go. So we had pre made meals as well.

Alicia Martinez 3:10
During some of the sessions as a director, like did you, were you in charge of making sure that everyone's schedule is like appropriate? Or did you have any faculty, like associated with the university helping you out?

Sanaa Abid 3:27
Yes, we had a lot of different departments on campus helping us out we were always in touch with the admissions team. Aramark helped us out a lot with the food in the boxes. The the team upstairs on the third floor of the Blum library, I'm like, I don't know their entire title. But they helped us out with testing with checking in. So we had a lot of hands on deck for Zaragoza.

Alicia Martinez 4:03
And then, um, to ensure like safety guidelines to make sure everyone's like wearing their mask and appropriately, social distancing. How are y'all able to manage that?

Sanaa Abid 4:14
We there are definitely students or parents who didn't have our muscles at times, but just we would give them a kind. Just ask them kindly to put their mask back on and remind them that you know, we're in COVID times and if we want this program to go smoothly, it would be very helpful for them to put their mask on and they were all very considerate and made sure that they had their masks on. So it was just, you know, constant reminders throughout the day just to make sure everyone was safe, because that's our main priority.

Alicia Martinez 4:47
All right, perfect. And then our last question is, from your experience as a new student coming into St. Mary's, how do you think that differed from the students that you're leading this past summer as Director and leader.

Sanaa Abid 5:02
So my time as Zaragoza leader as a sophomore, and my time as Zaragoza director I've seen all the different changes. During my freshman year when I went through Zaragoza. I experienced different skits. There is a lot of bonding between students and we had huge groups of students at a time in our so called rattler meet groups, that's what we call them. But this time around, because of COVID, we would have to have smaller router meet groups. We didn't do the skits as well, there's a lot of activities that we sadly had to let go just because it was safer for us to accommodate but doing so we did keep a lot of things as well. We kept one of the presentations where everyone stands in a circle and students bonds with each other. We kept those kind of aspects, but we took away some of the ones that were involving a lot of physical contact just to make sure people were safe and people were comfortable with these social distancing.

Alicia Martinez 6:08
Alright, awesome. Thank you so much for the interview. It offered a lot of insight on what I'm studying are COVID-19 and Zaragosa orientation, um, and that's pretty much it. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Sanaa Abid 6:22
Of course.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Item sets

This item was submitted on November 29, 2021 by Alicia Martinez using the form “Share Your Story” on the site “A Journal of the Plague Year”: http://mail.covid-19archive.org/s/archive

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