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John Lennon once wrote that life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.
While Gina Roby takes her studies in Human Resource Management quite seriously, she has another ambition that, given the opportunity, she’d like to fulfill as well.
“Human Resource Management was a lateral move, and I think a good move, for me after managing a salon for 20 years. You continue to build on what you know,” she said. “In my heart, though, I’m a playwright.”
Gina has had the opportunity to flex her writing muscles between business courses at Ambler. She submitted three poems to The Parable, the campus literary journal, which will be published during spring semester.
“One was called Ode to Nat Turner,” she said. “I had been reading slave narratives and recently read Nat Turner’s biography. He was the first to resist in the time that he lived.”
Another of her poems “is from my divorce period,” Gina said, entitled Someone Standing on My Shoulders.
“One of my first personal narratives was written for an English class here at Ambler. (Ambler campus English coordinator) Diana Pazicky told me it was wonderful. For someone from another group, another background to say something like that, I felt validated,” she said. “I was told a long time ago that my stuff was good, but not from an academic. She’s always encouraged me to submit my work. To teachers, I have to say, you never know, you could say something that really changes a student in a positive way.”
Gina has also completed a few children’s books — though no one has seen them quite yet.
“They are all handwritten. Basically I write and then put it to the side for the time being. I wrote one recently called Kitty and Peace,” she said. “It was about 3 a.m. and I saw the outline of a cat just bidding his time on a ledge. I was thinking about the war in Iraq as well.”
During the story, a bird, Peace, stops by to chat with Kitty, a cat, who is looking quite sad that day.
“At its heart it’s about an appreciation for animals but also about an appreciation of freedom, of being loved, and that peace brings serenity,” Gina said. “I know you’re not supposed to jump up at 3 a.m. and write a children’s book, but sometimes that just how it happens.”
Back in the classroom, Gina spent the end of the semester studying and completing assorted finals for her major and core courses.
Her Human Resource Management 083 final was 76 multiple-choice questions “and my head is hurting from it,” she said.
“It was mentally exhausting. I felt on this test that there were always at least two possible answers for each question,” he said. “I’m never quite sure how these things are going to turn out. I took a test earlier in the semester where afterward I felt like I hadn’t really known anything and it turned out I received an 86 on it. Sometimes, you just never know.”
Her feelings toward Legal Studies C001, Law in Society, are a bit more solid.
“I leave the class refreshed and mentally stimulated. Some of the problems have you examining whether you believe an attorney will or will not win a case,” she said. “You explain your position using the concepts you’ve learned in class and as long as you are able to back them up, you’ll do well. The professor bases your grade on how you’ve answered the question, not necessarily on one specific answer. It really gives you the opportunity to show what you have learned and that you understand the principals behind it.”
Gina appreciates that kind of flexibility in the classroom, “because it gets you to think.”
“Each student may get something a little different out of it,” she said. “You have to look beyond the text, look for that common thread.”
For Calculus, Gina said, a full day of reviewing practice tests was in order while her last final. For Political Science C052, Foreign Governments and Politics, “we’ve also been given something to study from,” she said.
“Out of four essay questions, we were told that two of them would be on the final. Basically by studying for all four questions, you’re well prepared for the final,” she said. “I truly think schools today, at almost any level, are requiring more from their students and I think that’s a good thing. I want to feel alive and I want to be challenged.”
Gina said that while she might say she’d like things a little easier at times out loud, “when you accomplish something that you thought you couldn’t do, it makes you want to strive to achieve even more.”
“I think each semester there comes a time when you think to yourself ‘I can’t do this.’ I always thought I wasn’t very good at math, but doing well in calculus has been a real boost — it reinforces that I can do well,” she said. “I’m much less stressed now than in my first year; I know that this is what I should be doing right now and I know what’s required. Before, I’d look at a syllabus and freak out at what was required throughout the semester. Now it’s just normal procedure. You face it with the attitude that you will do your best.”
This is the third part of an “A Year in the Life” series featuring Gina Roby. Gina, who lives in Philadelphia, was a sophomore pursuing a degree in Human Resource Management at the timeof the series.
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