A couple of weeks ago, I met with Alexandria (Alex) Creel, our new Honors completion coordinator to discuss her background and what she most enjoys about working with Honors students. Our interview is as follows and has been edited for conciseness and clarity. If you have any further questions, Alex can be reached via email at alexandria.creel@honors.ufl.edu. Thank you so much to Alex for her time in this interview and service with the Honors Program!
Petlev: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? What’s your background?
Alex: I graduated from the University of North Florida in 2012 with a bachelor’s in health care administration because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do in college or what I wanted to study and then I worked in health care for a couple of years. The people you work with and the families of patients are the hardest part of health care, it’s not the patients themselves. It was cool. I highly recommend volunteering with older folks because you get to see what life is like at that stage. It’s fascinating. It makes you value making friends and connecting with your family and really having a community.
That was very hard emotionally, so I switched over to tech. I worked for Microsoft for a couple of years and got some computer certifications there. But corporate roles were very strange, I didn’t quite like it very much, so I then pivoted again into finance, got my stockbroker’s license, and worked there for a couple more years. I learned as much as I could. It was also fascinating because it feels like emotions are very heavy in all the work that I’ve done, and money is a big one that’s very emotionally charged. So that was fascinating.
And then during the pandemic, I was working from home and trying to save tons of money. I wanted to have lots of savings to do the next big thing, so I was already preparing to do something new. It was perfect timing when my best friends were getting married, buying a house and moving. They’re out in Keystone Heights now, and they were like, “You can live in our spare room until you figure out what you want to do.” And I thought, okay, I’ll just apply to UF, because the next thing I wanted to try was a little bit of academia. It worked out perfectly; I got hired part-time as a financial analyst. I wanted the time off too because I’ve been working overtime so much for the past two years.
As soon as I got there, they were like, “Do you want to be full-time?” I agreed, and they followed with, “Now we’re going to switch you from this department. We’re moving everything over.” I’d only been there for two months before they moved me into a completely different building with a completely different group of people. I became the most experienced person in my little team in two months, and we started the task of rebuilding research participant payments over in Elmore Hall.
We had to rebuild it from scratch, basically all the policies. I had to invent my day-to-day over there and write all the documentation. We finally got that area into a perfect, smooth-running machine, and then I saw the job posting over here.
Petlev: Why did you choose to come work in the Honors Program?
Alex: What really caught my eye about the job posting over here – because I love working at UF – is that principal investigators (PIs) would get upset at my old department sometimes because we were enforcing rules that they felt were not as important as others. And PIs are like, “Rules are so small. No, I’m over here curing cancer. I’m doing bigger, more awesome things.” On my side of things, we were just trying to make sure that participants were paid properly to keep things running smoothly. You have to be able to write down every dollar you spend when you’re researching because somebody gave you that money. You have rules to follow. But that’s small potatoes and stuff that PIs, they understand, but it’s not where their concern is. They are concerned with bigger things. And we were over there trying to say, “Please don’t get the IRS mad at us.” Keep things smooth.
It’s very good now. Actually, UF has the best and most technologically advanced research participant payment system of any university that we know of. We’re cutting edge.
Petlev: What’s your favorite part about working in the Honors Program?
Alex: As a financial analyst in Elmore Hall, we were all on the edge of campus. I never saw students unless it was a graduate student on a research project. And so when I had to come to campus I was like, “Oh, look at all these kids learning stuff!” It’s so fun. So just the change of environment and being on campus so much more now is really nice. And when I looked into the Honors Program – and my best friends, of course, both graduated from here and they had experience with the Honors Program – people were just talking about how nice the staff was and how helpful everybody was. And I thought that when I was a student, it would have been so helpful to have that extra guidance. So I thought, “Okay, I can help with that.”
Also, the job description mentioned things about event planning, and I love event planning. I felt like I was capable of doing the job well, and I’ve dealt with the most stressed people you could deal with in many settings. I thought “I could probably deal with stressed students very well. That sounds like something I’d be very good at.” So I’m over here now. It’s awesome!
I’ve only been with the Honors Program for a few weeks, so I haven’t had that much time. So far the people here have been phenomenal. It’s kind of a personal experience all over campus; it’s really hard to miss. You’ll meet people you never expected to talk to, and also people that will make you think “I wish you were my mom. You are the best person.” And it’s so hard; it’s very random. But everyone in the Honors Program seems like people I’d be happy to come into work and see every day, which is very important if you’re going to be somewhere long-term.
Petlev: What excites you most about your new position as Honors completion coordinator?
Alex: My position is so new; we are inventing it as I go through it. I’m getting information from different people in the Honors Program – and hopefully we’ll talk to more students eventually, too – and I will be inventing the position as I go through it. Dr. Johnson has ideas, and she is absolutely swamped and needs me to take some stuff off of her plate. We’re just trying to find things for me to do right now until I can get an idea of what this role should be, and then I’ll make all of the necessary documentation and policies. Create a job. I’m in a very weird place, but it’s awesome. I’ve done it before; I’ll be good there. All we know so far is that I will be helping people finish the program.
I’ve met a couple of the pre-med classes, and I’m telling everybody that if you have suggestions of what you think would be helpful to the students or yourself, let me know. Then we can try to see if it’s something we can develop and make into part of the program. A big bonus to working with the staff in the Honors Program is that the team seems very open to change and adapting, which is also atypical at UF and academia in general. Some people don’t ever want to change things. But change is good, so I’m open to suggestions and things like that.
Petlev: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Alex: I don’t think there’s anything else to add.
Petlev: It’s okay if there isn’t.
Alex: I guess wear sunblock on the back of your hands and your neck. It’s important!
Headshot Courtesy of Alexandria Creel
UF PRISM 