If you go to Brenau, you’ve probably met Jordan. Oftentimes, you’ll find her taking her lunch break with Sue or eating a Korean soup with some fancy chopsticks. Other times, you’ll see her helping one of our new international students or talking about her own time abroad. However, you might not know what it is she does in Student Services. Well, we talked with Jordan and she helped answer some of our questions.
Where are you from?
I’m from Birmingham, Alabama.
You went to the University of Alabama, correct?
Yes, I went there for my undergraduate and my first Master’s program. My second Master’s was at Duke University.
Where did you go after you finished your education?
I got my first job at Kent State in Ohio. I was there for two years and then I came to Brenau.
How did you end up at Brenau?
Well, my fiancé got a job at Delta and he moved down here; then, I started looking for jobs in the area.
I think a lot of people know who you are, but some might people might not know what is you do exactly. So, what do you do here?
Sure, my job consists of several things. At larger universities my responsibilities would be spread out amongst maybe five different people. But, as this is a smaller university, we all wear many hats. So, I do international student “stuff”, which is advise international students on their immigration status and give them paperwork so they can go and get their visas. The Code of Federal Regulations is quite thick for international student, so I give them information about that in order for them to maintain their immigration status. I also help them with the acculturation process and getting to know a little about American culture, Southern culture, and a tiny bit about Brenau. However, I leave most of [getting to know Brenau] up to the students here. Another part of job here, though, is helping any Brenau student to study abroad either at one of our exchange partners, or our faculty-led program, or through one of our affiliated programs. We are affiliated with the European Council program and that is a University of Georgia system wide program that we participate in—even though Brenau isn’t a part of the University of Georgia system.
When you graduated from college and started to look jobs, did you expect to end up doing something like this?
No, not at all. I graduated from Duke in 2010 and that was right at the beginning of the economy going through what it has and continues to go through. So, jobs were very few and far between; it took me a long time to get a job. I looked all over the country. I mean, I had interviews in Oregon and Chicago. So, I was looking everywhere basically. I really wanted to work and would still, one day, like to work for the Department of State or a think tank. However, those jobs are very difficult to get.
I know that you studied abroad. Where did you study?
I studied at Oxford in England, outside of Madrid, Spain, and I spent two months in Beijing.
Of the three, which would you say had the most profound impact on you?
Probably China, because I spent the longest amount of time there. I mean, being in Spain and England were similar, but different experiences. But I got a better of what it is like to live in China. I was able to see life and how people lived. I got to know someone who was a graduate student at the university; so, it was a deeper relationship that I was able to cultivate there. I was able to see a lot more and learn a lot more. England and Spain were easier, because I know English and I studied Spanish for ten years; whereas, I had only studied Chinese for two years. Actually, come to think of it, I really had it when I was in China. I loved China, but I hated being there. I was just struggling with the language so much and I was in class with a bunch of 19-year-olds from Duke and Yale—I was this older graduate student who didn’t know anyone. It was just horrible, because the language was just not clicking with me. But when I came back to Duke during my last year, everything just fell into place. It ended up being a great experience, but it was really rough while I was there. The only thing that kept me there was how much I loved being in Beijing. If I hadn’t liked China as much as I did, I wouldn’t have stayed.
Sometimes, it seems that people know what you do for the international students, but a lot of people seem to forget what it is you can do for students who already here. Why you do you think that is?
Well, it’s obvious that the international students are here—you see them and you talk to them. And we really don’t seem to have a strong culture of studying abroad here at Brenau. Studying abroad, also, is definitely not a cheap endeavor, but the students that I have talked to have found it to be worth every single penny. But, for a lot of students, its right-off-the-bat: “I can’t study abroad, because it costs too much money.” However, there are definitely ways to make it more affordable. You can as part of a class and they make that as cheap as they can so as many students that want to can. Also, when you go abroad, you aren’t on vacation; you’re taking classes and earning credits that count towards your major. I think there’s a misunderstanding with how much studying abroad costs and how much it is actually worth.