University of Michigan senior Shreya Patil describes how she has adapted as president of a student organization, a virtual Festifall, and her excitement to be back in Ann Arbor.

 

Interview conducted by Grant Floto
#UMSocial Intern and University Of Michigan Class of 2020

 

Q: We’re excited to talk to you about returning back to campus for your senior year next month. Can you tell us a little about yourself?

 

My name is Shreya Patil, I’m from a small town, about 30 minutes away from campus called Novi. I’m going to be a senior studying computer science. I’m involved in an organization on campus called Girls Teaching Girls to Code. That is my little passion project—it’s my little baby.

 

Q: Speaking of campus, you’ve been home now since March and you’re going back for senior year. How are you feeling about returning to campus?

 

Well, initially when all of this started, obviously the first thing I wanted was my independence back, because I came home to live with my parents because of everything that was going on and because campus shut down. I’ve developed a routine in quarantine and I’ve become used to living with my family. So there is a little bit of excitement to go back to campus, but there’s a lot more, I feel, hesitation because this is new territory for everyone obviously, and we’re going to have to change our lifestyles and the way we lived on campus. I don’t know how many of us are willing to do that. So it’s going to be interesting to even be on a blue bus again and going up to North Campus. It’s going to be a little scary because you’re in a small enclosed space with a lot of people. There is a lot more hesitation going back to school this time around.

 

Q: Could you talk a little bit more about the club you are part of? How have you worked around this pandemic in the past few months as president of the organization?

 

Girls Teaching Girls (GTC) was started at Stanford by a group of women about six years ago and they opened up a chapter in Berkeley in 2018. When I heard about them and their mission and their purpose, I was like, I want to bring this to Michigan. So I brought it to Michigan. I started our chapter about a year and a half ago. We’re still pretty small. We’re not that well established on campus, we’re very young. So we’re still, you know, growing our organization. This pandemic really threw a wrench in our plans to grow as an organization. We only do one event every semester. Our target demographic, if you will, is high school girls. And we work to foster their passion for technology and computer science and expose them to the world of technology, I guess, earlier than they would in high school.

 

Shreya Patil

Shreya Patil

Not everyone has a computer science class and not everyone is encouraged to take it, especially women. We’re just starting out and our last event was in April and that had to get canceled. So yeah, it really just threw a wrench in our plans and we’re trying to figure out how to go about doing everything that we do in a virtual manner still. So it’s a lot of just rethinking and trying to be creative in what we can do so that we can still impact high school girls in our area.

 

Q: Along those lines, do you think you will do a hybrid format this fall when you return? How do you and GTC plan to adapt when you get back to campus?

 

An example of an event we put on last year was we had about 30 girls come in and we booked a venue. We booked an auditorium, on North Campus, and we had the girls learn about web development and it was a very collaborative environment. You had groups of girls peddling together, learning how to code. So it’s very collaborative. It’s not just like an individual thing that you do. Because of the nature of the events we put on, we didn’t think it would be a good idea to have it in person, especially because we’d be bringing people off of campus onto campus. I just don’t foresee any high school parents wanting to send their 14, 15, 16 year old to a university campus where there’s lots of people to work in environments like that with 50 to 80 other girls. So we thought it would be best to follow suit along with what the women in Stanford and Berkeley are doing and hold just a completely virtual event.

 

Q: You’re obviously familiar with campus clubs and orgs. Do you think there will have to be universal adjustments across campus this fall for student groups and organizations?

 

So obviously it’s going to vary from organization to organization. For example, I used to be in Alpha Phi Omega, which is a service-based fraternity. So an org like that, where you have to go out with large groups of people and volunteer, that’s going to have to be done very differently. You have to minimize contact amongst people to obviously try to stop the spread of coronavirus. That’s going to be different. It’s also going to be different between well established organizations that have been around for a while versus an organization like mine, that’s just starting out. My primary goal right now is to grow my organization and get more people, so that when I leave the university, there’s still someone to look after it. But that’s going to be difficult because Festifall is virtual this year. When I think of the student groups on campus and coming into it as a new org, I sort of think of it as entering an already saturated market as a new business.

 

How do you get people to choose your organization over other people’s and build that appeal, I guess. It’s a lot easier to do that in person than it is to do it virtually. Virtually you’re just another organization in a sea of organizations. So it’s just going to be very difficult to sort of, I guess, adapt to that and it’s going to be different for every organization. I feel like it might be a little easier for student works that are already well established and do different kinds of work that might not be as collaborative and might be on an individual basis versus organizations where you either have to go out and volunteer or you have to work on projects with a group of people. You’re going to have to play it by ear, I guess.

 

Q: I’m glad you brought up Festifall because, especially for freshmen or incoming students, Festifall is one of the biggest events in the fall semester. It’s where you go to learn about what you might be able to get involved in and it’s a chance to meet people. Do you have any plans for Festifall?

 

Because we know it’s all virtual, I feel people are going to have to find different avenues of sort of marketing their organization, because again, like I said, you’re just going to be a student org in a sea of student orgs. So how do you make yours standouts? So for us, we’re trying to do a lot more with our social media and trying not to rely as much on Festifall for getting students to join our organization and sort of finding different avenues of reaching out to incoming freshmen and sophomores, because obviously those are the people we want to target because they would be able to keep an organization going. We’re focusing more on building a social media presence and perhaps reaching out to already existing organizations, like the Society of Women Engineers, or Geeks and Girls Meet to try and pull from their pool of people. That’s how we’re going about doing it. I actually haven’t heard much from other student orgs. I don’t know what the student orgs that I was previously a part of are doing but that’s what we are.

 

Q: Let’s transition gears here a little. Are you taking a class right now?

 

Yes, I am. I’m enrolled in an anthropology class.

 

Q: Okay, great. And you were remote in the spring, so you’re pretty familiar, I’d say compared to most, in terms of remote and online classes. What do you think of the switch to remote learning and what kind of recommendations do you have for how things can be improved this fall?

 

I feel like it varies from classes in LSA versus classes in engineering and EECS. For me, my lectures had always been recorded and I took advantage of that. I would sometimes not go to class and just watch the lecture and go at my own pace. I was very comfortable with it. There’s a level of discipline you need to be able to sort of self teach yourself or do something in a self-taught manner. I feel like, because I already had that, it was sort of an easier transition for me and an easier transition for my friends in computer science But with classes where there’s a lab component to it, like organic chemistry or something, I wouldn’t be able to speak towards that. But for me it was an easy transition.

 

I think something that went well for me was office hours, actually. Beforehand, it would be on campus and you’d have to go and sign up and you would maybe see IAs before office hours closed. But because there wasn’t an actual, physical place that they were going to be, and it was through Google Hangouts, they were a lot more accessible and there was just a lot more time dedicated to office hours. That helped me out a lot. So that was one positive thing that came out of it. I feel everyone’s transition is very different because everyone takes different classes and is being told different things. My classes didn’t require me to work with other people, whereas other classes had project components and participation components to them.

 

It’s going to be interesting to see how things are in the fall because we had such an abrupt switch in the winter term of last year, it just went completely remote. But it’s going to be interesting after doing like half a semester of remote and now going back to a hybrid situation.

 

Q: Especially for incoming students…

 

Yeah, because for them it’s going to be completely new. For the people already at U-M, they had half a semester to work through it and develop a routine and develop more discipline and work through teaching themselves their courses. They might be used to that. It’s going to be way different for freshmen.

 

Q: Absolutely. You touched on office hours, which is great, because I wanted to ask what you think faculty should keep in mind. What do you think would help you senior year, from your professors and from the faculty at U-M?

 

I think I just need them to keep in mind that though we’ve been dealing with this for six months, it’s still very new because we went from having classes completely online to having them completely remote. Now we’re doing a hybrid situation, so it’s not like, oh, we had like six months to deal with it. We’re used to going to school like this. It’s not going to be like that. It’s still going to be pretty new and fresh for people, especially the incoming freshmen. So, something I heard some of my friends say was that their professors didn’t understand that it was very difficult for people to transition. And just even like mental health wise, dealing with everything that was going on, it was a lot to take in and a lot to deal with. So maybe giving a little bit of leeway to students and having them be a little more lenient and understanding would be helpful. Communicate better, definitely. Try to reach out to as many students as they can. Make office hours more accessible. That would all help a lot.

 

Q: Are you excited to go back to campus this fall?

“It’s a lot of emotions all at once.”

I’m feeling apprehensive because I’m being cautious, but I don’t know how many other people are. It’s going to be crowded. You can’t avoid crowds of people. If you want to go to the library or even if you just want to get to class, you’re going to have to get on a bus with other people. So it’s unavoidable. Whereas I’ve been living in a manner where the only contact I’ve had with people it’s been my family and the people I work with.

 

It’s going to be completely different after six months of that, going back to the way life used to be. So there’s a little apprehension there, but I’m also very excited to see my friends and just do school again. I don’t think I’ve ever been this excited for school. I missed it. I’m excited to see my friends. Obviously we’re going to social distance and all that, but I’m excited to see them and excited to get back to my routine. Live on my own in an apartment on campus. It’s going to be great. I’m apprehensive and excited, I guess.

 

Q: I’m excited for you. Hopefully senior year turns out to be the best one yet. Thank you so much for being part of this. We’re excited to have people listen to your experiences and story.

 

Thank you so much, Grant.

 

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