SRA Hubster Reflections: Carmen Tirado’s Favorite Hub Features
When senior year started, I had extremely high expectations about what would happen. I was always told that senior year was the “best year.” Senior year was supposed to be the year to relax, the year when you are finished with everything, the year when you are on top, the year when you have more free time than you can imagine. Unfortunately that was the complete opposite of my first semester of senior year. I found it extremely difficult to juggle my social life, academic life, and family life.
Being a first generation college student, I had no idea how things after high school would turn out. I had so many questions but not as many answers. While I am not the oldest child in my family, I was in fact the first to decide to pursue higher education. When I wanted answers on how to apply to the CSU’s some of my classmates tried helping but soon I realized I was not the only one completely confused. At one point I was so confused and overwhelmed with the college application process that I almost didn’t apply. Then it was as if our senior class teacher, Ms. Love, heard our cries for help! She introduced Vanessa and Lorna to our senior projects class and they told us that we would have access to the SRA Hub for help on our college journey. I saw the relief in a lot of my classmate’s eyes as we now had an additional resource to help answer our questions. It was as if some weight had been lifted from our shoulders. I have outlined some of my favorite parts of the SRA Hub so hopefully other students can use it and get the same benefits from it that I did.
Access To Online Advisors & Webinars
Whenever we had a personal question we always had the option to email or message Vanessa and she was our savior. This was really helpful we I had questions I needed help with when applying to colleges and filling out financial aid forms. I also really appreciated the Hub webinars. While at first I’m sure the majority of us didn’t love having to find time to attend 4 webinars for class credit, I’m extremely grateful we did. Watching webinars like the “Time Management-Tips & Tricks” showed me how unproductive I was and that I could use my time more productively. I even decided to do what Vanessa suggested and bought a huge calendar and placed it in my room so that I could try to avoid procrastinating and so that I could schedule my time more appropriately.
The Hub Community
Despite the webinars being extremely helpful my favorite part of the Hub was the people. Everyone on the Hub was so helpful when it came to questions. A lot of times it’s easy to think we already know everything about college applications and going to college, but this is not true. I learned so much from other people’s questions on the Hub. Often times people would post a question on the Hub and I had no idea how to answer it but I knew it would be answered on the Hub. The environment on the Hub was also much needed. The positive environment on the Hub made everything feel calmer and helped to reassure me during stressful times.
The Hub Knowledge Library
The Hub has a bunch of useful information including templates, documents, PowerPoints and other resources. If you do not log-on everyday some of the older posts and resources can be easily missed but luckily the Knowledge tab on the Hub keeps everything organized so you can always go there to search for essential information. The Knowledge tab on the Hub is definitely one of my favorite features. When it was added I told all of my friends to check it out. The Knowledge tab has resources on most anything you can think of from how to make a resume, career assessments and money management tips.
Finally, it’s great to know that I can keep my account on the SRA Hub until I graduate from college! It’s nice to know I will have access to a community of advisors and students who know me and I can turn to them if I have questions or need support.
