Matt Lace on Covid19

The following is an computer-generated summary of the video transcript.

Who money was Matt Lease, and I'm finishing up my first year as a master student at Thunderbird. One thing that has been very interesting in the strange days has been to really take a step back and think critically about where I'm going. When you're at school, things could be very fast pains. This has been a unique opportunity for me to reflect on my career path and really where I want to go, because I am in this time of transition. So I've been It's been really helpful to be able to once again take a step back and really plan out the next part of my journey here and think about where I've been over the last academic year here at Thunderbird, how I've grown and what I want to take with me for the next portion of of my time, a Thunderbird and has been a lot busier than expected. Teoh, go back and spend time with family as well, so that has been rewarding and enriching very much so these days. I've also taken the time to reject a lot of people on length in and do some more research on companies that I'm interested in and identify alumni who work out those companies and really create a strategy for how I'm going to network as well during the remainder of my time and thunder burden through the summer as well. I've been very pleasantly surprised with how I've been expanding my network, and I've been jumping on a lot of calls doing informational interviews and organizing projects and really the taking ownership of my time here and making the most out of it, really. So I've been very pleasantly surprised with that. Do it quite honest and as far as Thunderbird goes, has been a very smooth transition. To be quite honest, I was very pleasantly surprised with how Thunderbird managed everything in transitioning to virtual classes, putting everything online. They kept us updated with everything that was going on, and they've managed very well have been very impressed. I really appreciate the transparency that the number has had, especially with the career management center with academic advising, the student success teams will really been there proactively reaching out and asking Hey, is there anything that we can do to help you and really paying attention to each student to make sure that nobody is slipping through the cracks that everybody has the most up to date information and are really focusing on their time at Thunderbird as an opportunity to really launch their careers a little more as well, which is what we're here for. It's been nice to not focused so much on the disruption right now with Govan 19 and really stay on track academically and stand track with some of the goals that we have set here coming into school. Really, all the teams have really succeeded in happen. We've appreciated the help that they provided us, and I really, um, feel taken care of here being a t bird, but also remotely these days. Let's see here, and these times have been able to keep my income stream as well, because I'm a teaching assistant for a couple of classes at Thunderbird, and so that's also been pushed on line as well. Keep earning a little bit of money is well on the side would have been very helpful because it would have been a lot more of a transition to to really go online with classes and also lose a job or lose an income source. That's been very helpful that all that for student workers has been pushed online and made made accessible for us as well. It's been a smooth transition, just being a student and teaching assistant to really pushing all that stuff on any being able. Teoh be apart off that its transition online as well has been unique to in structuring the courses and being a teaching assistant in this time doing working with the professor's on how to how to manage those Stange's how to be at the cutting edge of it have appreciated that, and I'm very impressed by once again. I've been very impressed by the alumni community in this time to live in very helpful, and I've connected with more alumni now in the last month or two than I have you know, prior as well. It's just been very nice having a long marriage outs and be very open to helping current Thunderbirds on this strange time, too, because they know that things are uncertain as far as the job market as faras. Is one of them very impressed by the amount of connections I've been able to make, even though we are learning remotely? Let's see here what is my favorite part about remote learning? I think my favorite part about remote learning these days has been to set up my home office. Um, I'm really excited for classes to resume again in person, just to be around my classmates again, to be with professors and be in that that environment because really, being at Thunderbird, we are tight knit community, and that's a huge draw for the program and one of the things that attracted me to it. I'm very happy to see that that hasn't gone away while being at Thunderbird remotely. There too many ways to socialize through Thunderbird these days and to continue building those connections in too many ways and there there's no way that everybody could attend all of them. Thunderbird has been very good at providing a lot of learning opportunities to There have been a lot of networking sessions or information sessions or webinars. One thing that I've learned about myself here on the government could start over one thing that I've learned about myself here during covered 19 has been that I'm a lot more adaptable than I. Then I thought I waas and that's I can really to turn myself into that. I can be resilient to some of those forces Rami and really succeed in any situation that I'm plopped into. I've really learned that I'm here during Cove in 19 as as we're all facing uncertainty and we're all maybe changing locations, going home, reconnecting with people we haven't reconnected with in a while, or not connecting with anyone because we're isolated. So just being reminded of the resilience that we each have that we all have has been encouraging, very uplifting. See here, and I really think that that ties into what it means to be a T bird truly is to be adaptable, to be able to be dropped into any situation and to learn about the cultivator in to be able to excel wherever you are in an organization or in the world or in your career as well. This is been very nice to see that to connect the dots a little bit more with the situation right now on how this have t birds were made to succeed into excel and to be resilient in this time of Grove in 19. What did I originally decide to attend a Thunderbird. How that really permeates everything that Thunderbird does and everything that Thunderbird is and stands for. I have it come from a background working abroad. I'm from Wisconsin originally, but most of my career has been spent in Ecuador, in Australia as well as popular Guinea to So when he made the move back to the United States to attend Thunderbird in Phoenix, a city I've never been to before, I was really drawn to, um, just the approach of Thunderbird hat And when I went to a school, I didn't want to go and learn things just only from the United States perspective or only from European perspective. Thunderbird has been refreshing to always be thinking about the bigger picture and to not just be focused on one little part of the world in one little part of an industry. To see how the whole context, the whole environment effects, things that we do No, no, there's been a lot of resource is that Thunderbird has provided us that it made the transition to remote learning easier without the constant communication from administration from student success, team, academic advising and the Career Management center. They've been in constant contact with us and really reaching out to every student on making us, you know, to keep that that feel of being on campus alive and because since we're busy every day working on projects or attending class or attending different events, honestly, it doesn't feel like much has changed because I'm able to tap into that community still and really reap a lot of the benefits.