Tag Archives: student workers

Celebrating Our Dedicated Student Staff Members

As you might know, the Lab generally employs anywhere from 4 to 6 student staff members at a given time. Our student staff are invaluable to the Lab, helping us keep up with our general circulating repairs, custom enclosures, Colibri covers, and commercial binding. Seven weeks ago, when both our parent institutions closed due to the pandemic, the Preservation Lab staff moved to working remotely. Two of our student staff members, Lexie Febel and Christine Shi, joined us in this adventure of remote work during COVID-19. Christine and Lexie are both conservation student staff members and our two most senior student employees.

Due to the nature of working remotely, general collections repair at home was unfortunately thrown out the window for our student staff, mainly due to a lack of time to prepare materials and projects before vacating the library. Fortunately for me, my fellow student staff supervisor in the Lab, Sidney Gao, was willing to collaborate to create thoughtful, virtual work-from-home assignments for Lexie and Christine. Sidney and I wanted to create assignments that would allow our student staff members to research and provide feedback on a topic that was important to both of them personally and professionally, while simultaneously helping us create a better work environment for student staff members. We also hoped that this opportunity would allow us to strengthen our skills as student staff supervisors.

Sidney and I decided to focus our assignments on mental health in the workplace, knowing that Lexie, as a Secondary Education major, and Christine, as a Psychology degree graduate starting her PhD in Psychology, would be passionate about this topic. The project includes three parts: research, synthesis of research and self-reflection, and recommendations for the Lab. Throughout the project we have been using Microsoft Teams to assign projects, communicate, share files, and offer feedback. And it is of no surprise to us that Christine and Lexie are doing a phenomenal job of their projects so far!

Part one of the Mental Health in the Workplace assignment. We’ve been using the Teacher Dashboard app within Teams to assign the various parts of the project and provide feedback when assignments are completed.

Since our student staff members and their work, both under normal circumstances and now, are so valuable to the Lab, it seemed only fitting for Christine and Lexie to share a little bit about their experiences working in the Lab:

Lexie:

(a 2020 Library Quality Service Award recipient)

Getting the opportunity to work at the Preservation Lab has been one of my favorite parts about college. This past March marked the 2^nd anniversary of me working at the Lab, and I hope to stay there until I graduate in 2021. Working from home and completing assignments revolving around mental health has really enlightened me on certain topics and has encouraged me to reflect on my own mental health practices. On a normal day when I am actually at work in the Lab, I enjoy completing spine repairs, but one of my favorite things that Christine and I have gotten the chance to do was to make our own books, using marbled paper for the covers.

Christine:

Working at the Preservation Lab has been an opportunity unlike any I have ever had. I’ve always had a passion for craftsmanship and the creative arts as well as a love and reverence for libraries, scholarship, and conservation. But after switching out of a design degree, I didn’t ever think I could have a job at the intersection of so many of my creative interests! The culture, work, and people at the Preservation Lab created a space for me to escape from a stressful campus and dive into a place of meditative craft and supportive learning. I loved being able to learn and practice new skills in bookmaking and repairs but also the opportunity to be a part of such an important mission.

Sidney and I wanted to reflect on our roles as student supervisors and have an opportunity to thank Christine and Lexie for their dedication and hardwork:

Sidney:

Working from home has allowed me the time to reflect on my position as a student supervisor, and on the value of student labor within libraries. I’ve gotten the chance to consider how my work-related philosophies influence those I supervise, and I realized that we truly cannot overlook the amount of mental and emotional labor that our student staff put into making libraries the wonderful places that they are.

The research I’ve done over this period of working from home has helped me understand the value of creating safe spaces and strong relationships with those I supervise. I feel so lucky to have gotten the chance to work with Christine and Lexie on this assignment. They’ve used their personal experience and academic expertise to help me better understand the ways in which I can support those around me. For that, I am truly grateful.

Jessica:

My role as student supervisor has never been something that has come easily to me. In fact, when I took on this responsibility several years ago, it was something that made me anxious, and, I’ll be honest, that I dreaded. My fear and anxiety was twofold. First, I am a very introverted person and I struggled to see how I could be an effective student supervisor. Second, I feared that I would mess up, that I wouldn’t be good at it and the impact that would have on the students. These are two fears that I continue to struggle with today, but I am conscious of them and I like to think that I am continuing to grow and evolve as I continue this role. As I often tell my student employees and our volunteers when they make a mistake or the repair didn’t turn out quite the way they wanted, “You are not a robot! You are human!” We all make mistakes, the most important thing is that we learn from them and use that knowledge as we go forward. We are flawed, and that is okay.

When I reflect on Christine and Lexie, I am so proud of them. I am grateful for their commitment to the Lab and to their work. But beyond that, I am truly thankful that they came to work in the Lab and that I have had the honor to work with them, both in the Lab and remotely. I could go on and on about their amazing hand-skills, their dedication and focus, their intelligence, and their thoughtfulness. I am hopeful that the work they have done remotely will not only allow Sidney and I to create a happier and healthier workplace for student staff, but that it will impact me and my ability to continuously improve as a supervisor. I have no doubt that I will gain new understandings and grow; and that will directly impact future Preservation Lab student staff for the better. So, thank you both!

A huge thank you, on behalf of the entire Lab, to Christine and Lexie (who have been working with us remotely this past month) and Emily Wagner and Charles Harte (who will hopefully return back to the Lab once the pandemic ends and our “new normal” begins) for being valuable members of our team!

Jessica Ebert [UCL] – Student Supervisor/Conservation Tech/Photographic Documentation Specialist

*While student employees are generally referred to as “student workers”, Sidney and I have decided to make a conscious shift in the language we use. We prefer the term “student staff”, as it more accurately portrays their role as members of our team and the great contributions they make to the Lab and to the libraries.

Toolkit Time Capsule

Each of our student workers is given a cubby, a general collections lab manual and a basic toolkit that is theirs to use and maintain throughout their time in the lab. Before a new student starts working and when a current student leaves or graduates I will take the toolkit and evaluate all the contents to make sure they are all there and in good working order. Usually when a students graduates and moves on this includes cleaning out years of scrap paper and debris. And often a complete scrubbing down is in order.
Over the summer I had several students graduate and leave us, so I had several kits to go through. When I was washing one of the older toolboxes I noticed some folded paper that was attached to the underside of a tray with masking tape. I immediately removed it, though it was already partially soaked with water.
Upon further inspection it appeared to be a collection of thoughts, quotations, poems, and a short story written on a piece of paper and a fragment of cloth. Some were written in ink, others in pen. I immediately texted the prior owner of the toolbox to see if they belonged to her, but she had no idea what I was talking about. My best guess is that these are several years old (the toolbox was in dire need of a good scrubbing), possibly dating back to before I was student supervisor and possibly before I even worked in the lab (i.e. 12 years or more).

What a fun mystery to stumble across! Especially when the most exciting things I usually find when I clean out student toolkits are bent microspatulas, collections of abandoned endbands or ALL the pencils!
Jessica Ebert [UCL] – Student Supervisor | Conservation Tech | Conservation Photography Specialist

One for the Books

This is a special post written by one of our student workers, Stefan Apostoluk, who recently graduated…but as the student supervisor I couldn’t help but add a few quick words about our students first. The last couple weeks have been bittersweet here in the lab as we’ve had to say goodbye to a couple of our long time students (DJ and Brad, and soon Stefan). It’s so wonderful to see them grow and change during the years they work in the lab and call them part of our team. But it is always fleeting, as is the nature of working at an university. Having to say goodbye year after year to these amazing people that have become part of our preservation family is not easy, but it is so rewarding to see them enter the real world and move into careers in their chosen field while also expressing how much they’ve enjoyed their time in the lab. As Brad Miller, another of our student workers who graduated at the end of April and who we said goodbye to last week, has said to me several times over the last couple months, “this is the best job on campus” with complete and utter sincerity. Without further ado, I’ll pass things over to Stefan, who so eloquently summed up his time at in the lab and wanted to share the story of customizing his graduation cap. Excuse me while I grab a box of tissues… – Jessica Ebert (UCL)

Stefan crossing the stage at graduation.

Graduating from college is weird. An end giving way to new beginnings, it’s exciting, tumultuous, and anxious. You have to say goodbye to so many places, people, and things that have become just so familiar in the span of a few years – time that felt like an eternity, but blew by in an instant. Frankly, I’m not much of a fan of goodbyes, but through graduation, I found the perfect way to close the book on college and give the Lab my farewell.
I’ve been a student worker at the Preservation Lab since the end of my first semester of college in early December of 2013 and I’ve loved every moment of it. My undergraduate studies in Computer Engineering were hard and dissatisfying, and while I identify as a Computer Engineering student through the challenges my classmates and I endured, my department was never a place that I loved. Instead, the Lab has been a home to me, filled with camaraderie and friends that I can’t see enough. They became my on-campus family, tucked away behind Langsam’s main desk and down a flight of stairs.
When graduation neared and it finally came time to customize my graduation cap and reflect upon my time at college, I thought about doing something techy and related to my major, but it just didn’t feel right! While lots of fun, flashy lights and LED screens just didn’t strike me as reflective of my college experience. Before long, the idea that to me would encapsulate my time at college hit me like a sack of bricks. It was obvious to me, and there was nothing else I could do that would feel right. I needed to make my grad cap into a book at the Lab.

In the process of altering/making his graduation cap.

With the resources of the Lab at my disposal, I set out to make a square book to replace the flat black cardboard top of my graduation cap. In the weeks leading up to graduation and with tons and tons of invaluable help from Jessica, I spent hours tearing apart the boring default cap, planning details of the book’s construction, and actually assembling the cap. The book sports a black cloth cover to resemble the traditional grad cap, but is quarter-bound with a mottled red spine to give the book some zazz and show off some UC spirit. Instead of attaching my engineering tassel to the cover of the book, I adhered it to the spine and turned it into a bookmark that hangs at the back of my head when worn. Most excitingly, I got to use the hot stamper to give my book an official title that succinctly reflected my feelings on leaving college – “Good Riddance.” All in all, I’ve created a work that I’m proud to have worn when I walked across the stage at graduation. President Pinto even complimented me on it!

I’m not quite done with college yet since I’m still working on my MBA, but I won’t be around at the Preservation Lab much longer. Really, it’s going to be hard for me to say goodbye to the Lab. These people who work to preserve rare books have archived their way into my heart. In a way though, I’ve already said my goodbye. Making my grad cap served as a bookend to my undergraduate career, and I got to spend a lot of time in the Lab by making it. With signatures and heartfelt messages from everyone at the Lab written right on the first pages of my grad cap book and fond memories of my time at the lab written to my heart, I won’t be leaving empty handed.

Stefan A. Apostoluk (UCL) – Senior Student Worker