Over 85 hundred people have filed for unemployment in Lubbock county since the coronavirus arrived earlier this spring. Brenda Reimer, a graduating senior at Texas Tech, was one of them.
She was working at Dillards in the South Plains Mall when the coronavirus reached the city. The department store was quick to begin layoffs. “the part-timers were the first that got laid off,” Reimer said, “So I was super stressed when it first happened.” Her managers sat their part-time staff down and encouraged them to apply for unemployment immediately.
She was saving up to move to a new place. She had hopes of landing a job in any city that would help launch her career in video production. But those plans have been put on hold. She was fortunate though. Unlike a lot of her coworkers, she qualified for unemployment and because she was laid off towards the beginning of March—before the chaos of the pandemic reached its apex—the unemployment process went smoothly for her.
When COVID-19 first made its way to the United States, Reimer didn’t understand the severity of the situation—it didn’t seem real to her. But once the tides shifted and people began losing their jobs, including Reimer herself, reality began to sink in. Over the past month and a half, she’s shifted her plans for the immediate future. “I think I am just going to stay local for the summer,” she said. By fall, when things hopefully settle down, she explained, she’ll reevaluate her plans for leaving Lubbock.
In the midst of losing her job, she also lost the opportunity to squeeze one final bit of hands on learning out of her college education. This is her final semester and she explained that the classes she was enrolled in aren’t the kind you can do outside of the classroom.
Reimer had saved the more hands-on classes for her final semester of college. The idea was that she would be better prepared to enter the workforce right after graduating. However, once classes shifted to virtual-only, she and the instructors quickly realized the content wasn’t easily adapted.
Pretty much all of her courses this semester involved larger projects that required equipment like lighting, cameras and audio recorders—equipment your typical college student doesn’t own. Her lighting class, for example, went from working with studio lighting setups to working with available light, like natural light and lamps.
“It’s the hands-on classes is what I was looking forward to most my entire college career,” Reimer said. “It’s kind of been a bummer to not be able to do any of the projects I thought we were going to do.” But the halt in her plans hasn’t discouraged her from pursuing her goals in video production. “I don’t have as much hands-on experience, but I don’t think that I’ll shy away from it.”
