Sheena Golding sat nervously
smoking a poorly rolled cigarette outside of Hunter North on a bench
on a 62 degree cloudy Thursday afternoon. “I can’t even afford an
internship” Golding said as she purses her lips between her cigarette.
“Between 40 plus hours of work and 16 credits, I’m lucky to fit
sleep in.” Golding wore a red long-sleeved T-shirt, black pants, and
gladiator style sandals. She hugged herself as the September wind cut
through. “I’ve been at Hunter for five and a half years. I had to
take two semesters off just to afford the next. After a semester off
I wondered if I wanted to even go back. Very time consuming and it’s
a lot of money. I had to save up for books.”
Golding is not alone. Of all
the Hunter students that were interviewed many expressed similar concerns,
if not more amplified issues with this semester. From fitting in time
for an internship to being able to afford all of the books that are
required, Hunter College students are biting their nails.
Paul Benson, 24, of Roosevelt
Island, transferred to Hunter in 2007 from Concordia College in Westchester,
New York, to major in accounting. “It’s a good feeling to be in
college when the economy is this bad,” Benson said as he walked across
the crosswalk connecting the North Building to the East. “I’m just
really hoping it will bounce back in two years, when I’m done with
my bachelors, which is now the equivalent to a high school diploma.”
Benson said as he stopped to zip up his blue hooded sweatshirt, “Luckily
I’ve got some time. Hunter likes to make it so graduation isn’t
the easiest thing to achieve on time. The advisors haven’t been much
help. I feel like they could have helped me out a little more over the
past two years in getting on track better with graduation.”
With the current poor economic
situation not looking too attractive to future college graduates, many
are trying to figure out if just a bachelor’s degree is enough for
them to be as successful as possible.
“It takes a lot of work to
get your bachelors degree, so I want a job really bad after all of this.”
Said Berleen Joseph, 21, of Queens, New York. Joseph was wearing a black
blouse, skirt, and dress shoes and had a head of dyed red hair. She
is an English major and also the president of the Haitian Students Organization.
It was a Thursday afternoon when she was is in the middle of homework
for one of her classes. Sitting in the student cafeteria Joseph said
that “the economy and the issues right now are being blown out of
proportion. I like to think that things will be okay. I just know that
I’ll have to go on to grad school to get a really good job down the
road. It is stressing me out just thinking about it.”
Jillian Puszykowski, 23, of
Brooklyn transferred to Hunter’s graduate program after graduating
from Michigan State University in 2009 for landscape architecture. Puszykowski
now studies urban planning. She was wearing a red long-sleeved T-shirt
and jeans. Sitting outside of Hunter’s North Building, she said, “I
moved out here for grad school two months ago. I really hope that it’s
worth it.” Puszykowski held a bag of recently purchased text books
from the school’s bookstore. “I spent a lot of money on books for
my classes, and I had to wait almost 30 minutes- just to give them a
lot of money. Like I said, hope it’s worth it. I obviously don’t
have much money to spend, I am in college,” she said. “It’s also
New York City, so rent isn’t cheap, even out in the middle of Brooklyn.
I just hope I can stay afloat.”