Taken by Nebyou on January 6, 2022
Hello everyone, I would like to introduce my partner Nebyou Tesfaye. He is 19 years old and went to Tucker High School. He graduated in 2021. His favorite subject is math. To make math easier, he would find easy ways to remember rules. His hobbies include music, anime, gaming, and origami.
He came to Georgia State University (GSU) because it’s close, affordable and the scenery is great. His major is computer science. Ultimately, he wants to become a Technician or work in information technology. In interacting with people at school, Nebyou believes communication and social skills are key. One aspect of school he enjoys the most is the diversity and different perspectives.
Nebyou believes his learning abilities aren’t up to the standards that he desires. He wishes to improve them. More accurately in time management and studying. He feels that he needs to focus on working out his life and balance his work life as he grows into a more capable adult. He considers himself to have creative versatility. That means you approve of people because they have a variety of skills. He also has personal resilience. Being individually resilient involves behaviors, thoughts, and actions that promote personal wellbeing and mental health. He is able to withstand, adapt to, and recover from stress, and misfortune. Also, continue or return to a state of mental health wellbeing by using effective strategies.
Nebyou also would describe himself as very ambitious. Being ambitious means, you have a desire to achieve particular goals. Ambition motivates you to stay up late studying and defer partying to increase your chances to be successful. Ambition in life is very important because it will guide your future goals and achievements. It motivates you to aspire for excellence in all you do.
Another aspect that he thinks is key to his academic self is being organized. He believes being organized makes life a little easier. Keeping your homework and important class information sorted out by subject. Also, Nebyou believes that having a clean space leads to a clean mind. Furthermore, he tries to maintain a neat and orderly study area, it promotes attentiveness and improves your performance.
When it comes to Covid, for Nebyou it was a crazy experience. Covid forced him to study on his own and he never knew how to properly self-study. As a result, his grades dropped. He felt he couldn’t take the class seriously without having to come into a classroom daily. He was accustomed to laying in bed playing video games. In addition to his education, Covid was difficult for him in general, for him and his family. His family lost close relatives and loved ones. The isolation was difficult. He squabbled with his sisters a lot because they couldn’t leave their house. Regarding the article, we read in class (COVID-Era College: Are Students Satisfied?), Nebyou felt it was an interesting article. He agrees Covid was a hard time for everyone and no one was prepared for it. Also, he felt college rules didn’t help those students that needed help. Often students did not technically qualify for services based on arbitrary rules. I agree with Nebyou that students did not know how to adapt when the virus hit. Ms. Ezarik accentuated students that were even torn on whether they anticipated common COVID mitigation strategies.
In conclusion, my interview reveals that Nebyou is still trying to figure out how to deal with college and just life in general. Life is always unexpected. No matter what life throws at you if work hard you will always succeed. Success in school and education should be every student’s number one priority. In reality, no one ever wants to go to school, no one enjoys it, but we know that it must be done. In the end, Nebyou and I agree, with anything and everything you want to accomplish, hard work pays off.
Works Cited
Nebyou Tesfaye, Pair interview transcript, January 2022
Ezarik, Melissa. Student Experiences during COVID and Campus Reopening Concerns, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/03/24/student-experiences-during-covid-and-campus-reopening-concerns.