Student Health and Counseling (SHAC) at the University of New Mexico recently released “HonesTea with SHAC HP,” a new podcast that reassures students that they are not alone in their struggles and anxieties when facing this most unusual school year amidst a pandemic.
In the “Welcome Back Lobos” episode released on Aug. 18, SHAC student-employees Tiffany Martinez, Chris Naranjo and Leah Adent host the podcast (available on Spotify, Apple Music or Amazon) and discuss their thoughts and worries about the fall semester in a casual and relatable format.
Martinez poses several questions to her fellow hosts about their feelings on returning to a campus absent of the educational and social opportunities many students have relied on to get through the stress that comes with school and work.
This topic has been hot on everyone’s minds with the start of an online semester, and school seems to get more tedious and repetitive with every Zoom meeting I attend. There seems to be a limit on how interesting a Zoom call can get, and I find myself zoning out way more than I did during in-person classes.
The next segment is about how students are adjusting to virtual learning and the many obstacles and setbacks that come with this peculiar modality of teaching. Naranjo and Adent talk specifically about the learning curve and distractions with distance education. This part was easily the most relatable portion of the podcast, as students have been struggling with the distractions present in our own homes.
When asked about returning to campus, Adent responded, “I am not looking forward to it ...I feel like my anxiety is going to be quite high.”
This woe is surely a perspective many can relate to, and I anticipate an eerily empty campus for the foreseeable future.
The hosts reminisce on life as a college student pre-coronavirus and the many activities and routines that have disappeared in the past six months — a sad activity that’s easy to dwell on.
“It’s been a different type of year. I miss being able to eat together or walking through campus and seeing people,” Martinez said. “I was on campus the day before yesterday, and it was dead.”
Naranjo and Martinez go on to praise UNM students and the respect they have for the health and well-being of their fellow Lobos, seeming to stray from the overall theme of the show. Naranjo said what little students he saw on campus were socially distancing and wearing masks, which he said was reassuring.
“Our Lobos are resilient. They always have been, and they always will be,” Martinez said.
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This light-hearted, stream-of-consciousness based show is sure to make any anxious students feel heard and a part of something bigger, and it made me personally feel like I wasn’t alone in my concerns. The trio of student hosts encouraged any anxious or struggling students to seek out SHAC’s services, including Therapy Assistance Online.
While listening to the first episode, I felt as though the hosts have yet to find their conversational footing and charisma. The loose nature of the introductory episode makes the focal point a little hard to identify at times, but I believe these minor issues will be resolved as future episodes focus more on answering questions submitted by students via SHAC’s Snapchat and Instagram pages.
I want future episodes to feature a memorable theme song or introduction, which of course all great podcasts deserve. A consistent introduction is something that builds recognition in the listener’s head. It’s hard to find a single episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” where he doesn’t open with an enticing and enthusiastic “Hello friends!” while the expletive-laden missives introducing “WTF with Marc Maron” immediately give the listener a sense of what they’re about to hear.
Chris assures UNM students that SHAC employees want to see students succeed and that students shouldn’t hesitate to visit or take advantage of any mental health resources on campus.
“We wish you well, welcome back to campus and we look forward to surviving 2020 with you,” Tiffany said to bring the podcast’s opening salvo to a close.
Samuel Fleig is a freelance reporter at the Daily Lobo. He can be contacted at culture@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @samfleig
