• ADULTING GUIDE LOCATED INSIDE •
By Maggie Thornton
margaret.thornton882@topper.wku.edu PHOTO: Anna Leachman ILLUSTRATION: Alex Cox VOLUME 96 • ISSUE 13
WEEK OF 11.17.20
BURNED OUT
Students feel the effects of a semester amid COVID-19
Burnout is nothing new for college students, but this semester it is amplified by a global pandemic, economic deterioration, rising social tension and a new online format for learning. These challenges, with no breaks in the semester, left students anxious and exhausted and everyone is facing challenges they wouldn’t have been able to wrap their minds around previously. One of Jennifer Redifer’s main areas of study is cognitive load, which she said can help explain the lack of motivation many students are experiencing. Redifer
By Michael Dylan Payne
is an associate professor of psychology who holds a doctorate in educational psychology. Cognitive load, Redifer explained, is the mental resources you use to perform tasks. Extraneous cognitive load is anything not directly related to the task at hand that distracts you. “So, with this semester being what it is, having additional demands of doing work in a weird online format and not having as set of a schedule, that can feel like an extraneous cognitive load and it can make completing tasks more difficult than a
normal semester.” Redifer said. Redifer said it may not be that the assignments or workload are harder than or different from a normal semester, but the new circumstances surrounding that workload can make them feel harder, and it can especially make starting the task harder. Darbi Haynes-Lawrence, a professor and the director of the child studies program, said she factored in this decreased motivation of students into her planning for the semester because if students are stressed to the point of distress, they
won’t learn. “I spent the summer looking at the content of my classes, and I looked at how can I meet the needs that are outlined in the curriculum and our course objectives while also being fair to the students and their mental health needs,” Haynes-Lawrence said. “I watched my colleagues, my child and her friends and my students in summer school, and I watched how their mental health shifted because of the pandemic, and it was atrocious.”
BURNOUT • A3
15 years with the bagel brothers
michael.payne993@topper.wku.edu Sandra Hurley wakes up before the sun has risen everyday to go to work on a college campus, pouring coffee and making bagels for the over 15,000 faculty members and students who call the university home during the academic year. Hurley, manager of Einstein Bros. Bagels, has lived this reality for nearly 15 years, starting her morning during the work-week many times before the sun comes up, rushing to campus to prepare the restaurant for opening at 7 a.m. “I like my job, I love the people I work with, and I’ve made a lot of really good friends here that are my family now, because I don’t go home that much,” Hurley said. Hurley moved to Bowling Green in 2000 with her husband, who worked for General Motors building Chevrolet Corvettes, a job from which he’s since retired, she said. “Believe it or not, I had a hard time getting a job down here,” Hurley said. “A lot of the spouses of people who worked at the Corvette plant, people thought those spouses didn’t need a job.”
Hurley went to a temporary agency to get a job and the man who hired temp workers asked why she needed a job if her husband worked for General Motors. “I got very offended by that, because I’m a very independent woman,” Hurley said. “I looked at him and said, ‘I’ll go home and get my bills and you can tell me if I need to work.’ So I left there.” Hurley said, before she met her husband and sometimes afterwards, she’s always worked two jobs. “In my entire life, I never had a problem getting a job, until I moved here,” she said. In 2006, six years after they arrived, Hurley was preparing to go on vacation to visit family and she told her husband that if she didn’t get a job today, that she was done — not with their marriage, but done living in Kentucky. “In the six years I’d lived here, I’d never applied for Aramark,” Hurley said. “I applied that day and they hired me on the spot.”
EINSTEIN • A7
PRESTON ROMANOV Sandra Hurley has dedicated much of her life to working with Einstein Bros. Bagels as an employee for the last 15 years at Western Kentucky University. Hurley said she has always enjoyed seeing the students at WKU grow up and graduate.