Studying Abroad in South Korea: Student Experience

Introduction — Ice Breaking Questions with the Open Notes Podcast Hosts 

Angela Thompson: Well, welcome to the Open Notes Podcast, by UITAC Publishing. Our guest today is Kiana Gerhart, and she is the brainchild wonder mind behind much of the tech and videos that you see on YouTube for UITAC Scholar. Welcome Kiana! 

Kiana Gerhart: Thank you for having me. Hello! 

Angela Thompson: Hello! Hello! And of course we have our other UITAC brain here, Nora Mortimer. She is the person who really manages content for UITAC. My name is Angela Thompson. I am the director of content and co-founder, author, and all that other kind of stuff for UITAC Publishing. So, first question we have today, Kiana, can you tell us about where you’re from, and what kind of what inspired you to pursue an interest in higher education and publishing? 

Kiana Gerhart: So, my name is Kiana Gerhart. I am born and raised in the U.S., but I got my business administration degree as an international student in South Korea. So, one of my focuses for the section that I really liked was marketing. So, after graduation, I was looking for jobs, internships in the marketing sector, and I happened to stumble along UITAC Publishing since you were looking for a marketing intern, and here I am. 

Angela Thompson: And we’re very happy about that, to say the least. Let’s see, do you have any particular hobbies or interests that people might not know about? 

Kiana Gerhart: Well, I hope no one knows about me, but I’m just more along the lines of I like reading books. I currently have read, at least in the year of 2024, 353 books, so. 

Nora Mortimer: Oh, my God! 

Kiana Gerhart: Okay. I think I timed it that I can read 140 pages in an hour if the book is good. So, I didn’t really have any issues like reading the assigned readings in my college or any of that. So, I think that would be something that not a lot of people would know. 

Nora Mortimer: And is that like…? 

Angela Thompson: My husband is a voracious reader like that. Sorry, Nora. He does. He’ll sit down, and you know, a day... A 400-page book is gone. He’s just plowed through it. So, what were you gonna say, Nora? 

Nora Mortimer: Is that just reading physical books or audio books? I know I do 1.75 speed on audio books, and that has bumped up my reading list count, but is that physical books? 

Kiana Gerhart: I’m actually well, there’s this app called Libby, which is connected to my I think bookstore or library. So, they have, all these books on Cloud. In case people don’t know, you can read all these books for free. And then I keep my eye out on Kindle, and I get eBooks for free. But it’s a mixture between physical and eBooks. I think one or two is audiobooks. 

Nora Mortimer: Okay.  

Angela Thompson: Are you a fiction or nonfiction reader, do you have a preference? 

Kiana Gerhart: I’m trying to keep or to have more I would say nonfiction. But I think the stats that I have is 99% fiction, 1% nonfiction. But I’m trying to set a goal for myself, to have at least one book a month to be a nonfiction book. And I’ve learned a lot from that goal this year, so I’m glad I set it for myself. 

Angela Thompson: I am almost exclusively nonfiction. My husband and I ,when we went on our 1st date, we went to TGI Fridays, and we bonded over the book Memoirs of a Geisha, which was one of the few fiction books that I had read in a while, and so I’m almost entirely, with occasional exceptions. You know Harry Potter, the Da Vinci Code, those kind of things, but almost exclusively a nonfiction person. How about you, Nora? 

Nora Mortimer: I would say, I’m kind of like a 75/20 with fiction. Yeah, I like the sci-fi, the fantasy. I just finished a book, and I had read a whole series that was kind of like romance, and I get done, and I get tired of romance very easily. And so, the series that I started sounded like it was going to be a romance, and I immediately texted my friend, and I was like “I don’t like this. I need to swap back to like a nonfiction, to cleanse my palate.” That is what I use my nonfiction for. I would like to ask about your Zoom background. All of us have slightly different, but I think yours is the most different, Kiana. Can you tell us a little bit of it? 

Kiana Gerhart: Yeah. So, I think we’re currently filming the guinea pig episode for our Open Notes Podcast, which will be on YouTube and in other places that podcasts will be distributed. I created some sort of because, we already have a podcast art, I created a background that I thought could play ode to the background or the art. We have my name down here as well. So, I thought it would be a good one to publicize the podcast. 

Nora Mortimer: Okay. Can you tell us a little bit about how you made that? 

Kiana Gerhart: I at first, I used, I thought from podcast… art should be simple or research, that it should be simple and not like a lot of clutter. So, at first, I used black and white because I love black, and I love how white looks against black. Nora gave the wonderful, I say, color palette of pastels, which I think it makes it pop more besides the black, you know. Grungy. But yeah, it was a brainchild of the UITAC team, after receiving feedback, which I loved it like putting the open notes in the middle here. Even though I had it on the side Mrs. Angela gave great feedback, even though maybe it’s those little things that people don’t really care about, but I think it really makes it a beautiful product that we all contributed to, and it’s good to see. 

Nora Mortimer: Okay, yeah. When I was giving feedback, I thought about my own notes. I was a highlighter, and I color-coded everything. I know, like a little while ago there was like a trend of like, okay, was science blue or green? And why was history always like red? And so, I was thinking that. And I always put like social sciences or sciences as blue. And because or sociology starting to get into other social science disciplines. I was like, maybe blue, but also maybe like a pastel highlight. So, I’m glad that the color scheme kind of came into like a nice consensus once you worked your Canva magic. 

Kiana Gerhart: Well, what is an interesting like question or point that you brought up. Because I also think history is a red, like math and science are blue color because of how they have those like pictures on the walls in my school and they always labeled it as that. And it’s just so curious or like amazing how like a whole generation… I don’t know how you think, Angela, like what history color is, or what math is, but that whole thing. It’s crazy. 

Angela Thompson: Now I’ve always been not envious but impressed by people who could organize their notes with highlight, with color. I could never remember which highlighter to grab, and I’ve never thought about history as being red or science as being blue so very much a generational thing. I think when I was in school highlighter color was yellow, and you just kind of went with it. So… 

Nora Mortimer: How do you organize your LMS for different classes and courses? 

Angela Thompson: Now, for my courses, the LMS isn’t organized by color, but my notebooks that the folders that I carry around are, so Marriage and Family is blue, Intro is pink, my Sociology of Food was yellow… Let’s see, I think Harry Potter is red, and it was more a question of how many folders of each category were available in the department at the time. I really wouldn’t have necessarily chosen Intro as pink, but there are a lot of pink folders, so I grabbed them. But the color coding makes a big difference for me teaching, because I know I can grab easily. So yeah, the color–coding works. 

Nora Mortimer: Yeah. 

Angela Thompson: What about your background, Nora? 

Nora Mortimer: Like we said, we’re avid readers, so I thought like library when I looked through Pinterest to find my Zoom background. And I wanted something that had just a little bit of light usually, my spot in my study I get a lot of backlights. So, I was like, okay, the background can’t also be dark. But yeah, I think it’s just a little cozy. It reminds me of a K-pop video actually and so that was the deciding factor. 

Angela Thompson: There you go. That’s a good reason. Mine is what I really wanted was a Ravenclaw sitting room, but I couldn’t find one that I was concerned wouldn’t have a copyright associated with it. So, I just went for a place where I would like to curl up on that couch. And that’s a good nap spot for me. So, it just looked like a comfortable space to hang out in. 

Kiana Gerhart: Love it. They’re both… they both look so cozy. 

Angela Thompson: There you go. Cozy is good this time of year, cozy is good. 

How is life as an International Student in South Korea? 

Kiana, can you tell us a little bit about your background? Why you decided to study business when you were in school? Why you decided to be an international student? Why Korea or South Korea, specifically so, a little more information. 

Kiana Gerhart: Oh, goodness! So, I guess to start with how I thought introduced to South Korea was first of all, my mother was born and raised in the South American country Chile. She came over here and became a citizen of the U.S. in 2005. So, I’ve always had this like background in… let’s say…  the world, because in her household, when she was growing up, she listened to German music. She listened to French music. We had all this like background, and she also had I guess curiosity for other things. So, we got introduced in 2008, with a group called SHINee with their song… it was called “Ring Ding Dong.” A lovely song, you’ll never get it out of your head. 

Nora Mortimer: Amazing. 

Kiana Gerhart: And from there we just fell in love with the South Korean culture. So, we listened to more and more music we got, I think the first drama that we watched was Boys Over Flowers, while it was being published. So, we just fell in love, and we decided in 2014 to go and see Korea for the first time. And we went to Busan, Seoul, Jeju Island, and it was really mind-opening to see all this like new different culture. My sister went there for college at Ehwa Woman’s University. And I originally didn’t want to go to college in Korea, but I think I did a research project in my junior year about King Sejong. He’s labeled as one of the greatest kings in Korea, because he created the written Korean language for his people, because before they were like a tribute country of China. So, Korea was using the Chinese writing hanja for everything. So Chinese writing is notorious for being very complicated. It has over 10,000 characters, so it was quite impossible, especially during that time to learn it. Only the scholars and people who had the money and the education could learn it. So King Sejong was a very forward thinker in the sense of… 

“My people need to prosper, and in order for the people to prosper. We need something that helps them, and when the people prosper, the country will prosper.” 

King Sejong 

Kiana Gerhart: So, I thought that if Korea was so progressive then… how would it be now? So, I applied to Seoul National University and business administration because I thought business is a field that makes money. And I was like, I need to make money so I happened to apply there for that degree. And I got accepted, and it was cheaper to go there than it was in the U.S. So, I headed over there. 

Nora Mortimer: Hmm! I didn’t know it was cheaper there! Do they have, like different international student rates than like Korean citizens? 

Kiana Gerhart: Well, I first got a scholarship that was able to it was like a 1-year scholarship, but they gave me living expenses along with that. So, I thought, if I save my living expenses, I can pay for tuition. So, it was a very like case-by-case basis, at least for me. And then my parents helped pay half for a couple of years. The tuition is different, based on the department that you’re in. So, in science, it’s more expensive. But in my department, I think my tuition was one of the cheapest at ₩2,440,000 Korean won [when I went to school], and that, I think, is around $1,800. So, if I pay half and my parents pay half, then that is way cheaper than tuition, and even my home state. 

Nora Mortimer: Yeah, that’s interesting. 

Angela Thompson: Yeah. 

Nora Mortimer: Did you have to take the C-stat? I know, like college entrance exams is a big thing in Korea. 

Kiana Gerhart: Yeah, international students don’t have to take the suneung (수능)  or the college entrance exam. In a way, when I applied, I only had to give my country’s equivalent, which is the ACT or the SAT. 

Nora Mortimer: Nice, cool, and how was the like work, culture, or school culture different than what you had kind of been like socialized to expect in U.S. college? 

Kiana Gerhart: So, I’d say the U.S. is very… how would I say like not open, but more, I think, friendly in the sense of… if I was in a class and I needed help, I could just go to a random student and be like, “You know what? I don’t understand any of the material. Is it okay if we like, make a study group and like, go to the library, and do it?” And I think a lot of the U.S. students would be very down to just like on the fly go, be like, yeah, I’m also scared. Or whatever of this, this class. So, let’s do that. Let’s make a study group. 

And in Korea it’s very, at least in the college that I went to, it’s very competitive in that sense. So, when I went to do my American way and asking like, “Hey, can we make a study group or something? And like, go over this material?” I got a lot of, like, “this girl must be from an elite American college or high school,” which I wasn’t, by the way, from like a place that had only like 10,000 people as a population and they saw me as competition. So, if they helped me, they would be ruining their chances of getting a good grade in the class, because in Korea, at least in my college [when I went] they have something called the bell curve. And that’s where a certain amount of students can get an A, certain amount of students can get a B, and a certain amount of students can get a C, D, and F, but it’s assigned in a way, so only 5 students can get an A and it doesn’t really matter like your status. So, in a way, I think one of the classes that I got my final grade was maybe like 86, but I got like a C or something like that. 

Nora Mortimer: Hmm. 

Kiana Gerhart: So, it’s more assigned in that way. No, it was really difficult for me to find friends, at least in my own department, because I was looked at as competition and it was really difficult for me to make friends in my college. 

Angela Thompson: Were the classes conducted in Korean? I know in some international some universities they do conduct their classes in English, and do you speak Korean? 

Kiana Gerhart: I think I chose specifically business administration because it’s a track that I have completed my degree completely in English. But a lot of the classes were like finance or accounting that were all in English. So, I ended up having to take classes in Korean because they were easier in the sense of the material was different. It was more like marketing or strategy, so it didn’t have to do more with numbers, but it had more to do with like the concepts. 

Nora Mortimer: Yeah so, you would say conversationally, business Korean fluency?  

Kiana Gerhart: That’s a great question. I went there speaking like, where’s the bathroom? My name is this… That simple thing. But I wouldn’t say that I learned a lot of like the business jargon but I can pick out some things, but I won’t be able to speak in that complicated mess of like… like, in a way, if I had to speak like this, I don’t think I could be able to speak in this fluency. But I can get around, and I’m on the cusp of like doing better but I still have to practice more if that makes sense. 

Nora Mortimer: Yeah. 

Angela Thompson: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. 

How is Transitioning from South Korean Culture to the American Culture? 

Nora Mortimer: And then what was it like transitioning back into like American work culture and starting your internship here? 

Kiana Gerhart: I think only 1% of the population in South Korea, I can be wrong about this—it’s just a percentage off my head, but like the biggest like slice of that foreigner percentage is [Korean] Chinese, and then I think the next one was Mongolian. So, when you see me in Korea, they wouldn’t expect that I speak Korean. So, I’m like, if you were waiting in line, no Korean would to me and be like, “Hi, how are you,” like make small talk. Small talk doesn’t really exist there… But in the U.S., for example, it’s like you wait in line, and the line is like 10 minutes long. You could probably just go and talk to the person behind you and say, “Hey, why is this line like so long?” And then you would, like, have this conversation with this person behind you, this stranger, and leave like there’s no issue after so when I came back here people like, oh, “Hi! How are you? How are you doing? What are you gonna do this weekend?” It’s like, “Why are you asking? What, what’s going on like… Why, why do you want to know? Do you wanna like hang out with me this weekend, or something like, no, stop asking.” I was like shocked like, why are these people asking me so many questions stop it. So I think Americans are very warm people, especially when I went to the airport and the first time I like landed on the plane, and one of those immigration agents, he just smiled at me like, “Welcome back, welcome back home!” And I just started bawling because find those right people in Korea? They’re they really dedicate a lot of time to you like my friends. They are still messaging me now. They’re like, “How are you doing? I hope you’re doing great this today like, did you eat?” Yet they feel there in a different way. 

Nora Mortimer: Yeah. 

Angela Thompson: The other day, and it did point out, I think the person was from Germany. I’m not sure. And they were talking about something you have to adjust to when they come to the United States is people smiling at you and people being friendly towards you. When I lived in Boston, and kind of like New York has a more of a, I don’t want to say less friendly demeanor, but less friendly than some other parts of the country, and I’ve heard people say that it just took them a long time to feel like they connected, because it’s not an automatic smile. “How are you?” “Want to bond with you?” [type of smile]. Even if it’s not necessarily always genuine. Here you do get a sense that you know people, hey? How are you doing? At least you feel like you’re acknowledged, or you exist, and they acknowledge your existence, which I think on some level, is pretty important. So, tell us about what you did as an intern and what you do now, Kiana? 

Kiana Gerhart: So originally I’m an intern [at UITAC Publishing] I joined in the summer of 2024, and y’all assigned me like to how would I say, email campaigns, creating mock email campaigns as well as like looking at market research for different colleges in higher education that have sociology programs, creating designs that would be posted on the social media like they came up with an idea about happy birthday for sociologists that y’all use in your engagement packages. As well as creating like video content, like introducing the new UITAC team and things like that. 

Nora Mortimer: And the transition into contract employee—was that a lot of the same roles? Like, what was the difference? 

Kiana Gerhart: I’d say it would be putting everything that y’all taught me in intern, in my internship into practice. So actually sending this email campaign, actually hosting content on our platforms like Linkedin and certainly we’re doing like post for Pinterest and Instagram so as well as X, YouTube. Now, I think it’s like that cool even though I started off as an intern UITAC Publishing has given me, I would say, a lot of power or responsibility, and, and giving these platforms these passwords into my hands that I can start posting on them. So I’d say, that’s a quite scary thing when I’m in charge of this brand creation and making sure that brand consistency is there and that logos are correct and things like that. And email campaigns are sent to the right people, but even then, we have a lot of eyes on them. I think it’s a bit tough. I like putting my degree into practice and seeing what I can do to help. And yeah. 

Nora Mortimer: Yeah, I have the same kind of imposter syndrome switching from intern to employee. I wrote one of our engagement packages and I would tell Angela and Amber, our other co-owner, and like operations director that sometimes, as I was writing, I didn’t feel qualified, and then Amber and Angela would have to like remind me, you have a degree in this. You do have the skills and the talent to write, and so kind of like just having confidence in yourself as you make that transition is kind of the big, like, no, as your interns, we saw that you did have what it takes to be like a part of our team. So yeah, definitely the skills that you presented in your internship were above and beyond what we could have like expected. So, we’re glad that you’ve stuck around long enough with us. 

Angela Thompson: What are some challenges of working virtually, I mean, UITAC is we’re a virtual company. Rarely do we all rarely are we all in the same time zone. So what is it? What is it like to work virtually? What are some of the challenges with that? 

Kiana Gerhart: I’d say, since we’re all in different time zones like y’all are in Texas since you UITAC Publishing is based in Texas and I’m in Washington. I’m 2 hours behind y’all. So, even though it’s like 10 am, we have a 10 am meeting CST time you have to wake up at 8 am. So I think that’s the biggest challenge, because I, for example, I send messages. I usually work during the night, so I’m sending messages, 7 pm my time, which I think is like an okay time to send a message and then forget like, Oh, my gosh! It’s 9 pm over there. Maybe they’re winding down from work, and I’m bothering them. Or it’s 9 pm, my time. And then yeah, so I worry about that a lot. 

Angela Thompson: Actually, one of the things I like about the way we do things is I, you know I might wake up randomly at 3 o’clock in the morning can’t get back to sleep, and so I can get some work done, and I go ahead and send messages, and I’m not expecting anybody to reply immediately. You know this is none of what we’re doing is, you know, brain surgery, you know, lives are not dependent on it. And so we can have that level of flexibility and work at a time that works best for us and not everybody works well at the same time. And so there you go! 

Nora Mortimer: Yeah, when you first started and sending messages like I would get one. And maybe it was like 10:45 at night. And I was like, oh, my gosh, Kiana’s up so late doing work like I was worried for your like work-life balance. And then I would have to remind myself, oh, wait, okay, 2 hours behind. That’s not too late. But also, maybe, like you’re a night owl. I totally understand now. But yeah, the flexibility is nice and kind of the reorienting of virtual work from what, traditionally you know, like a 9 to 5 or something, like that is nice to have as life gets in the way quite often. Can you talk a bit about like your maybe your favorite project that you’ve done for you UITAC? 

Kiana Gerhart: The thing I found cool or the thing that I found fascinating the most was my, the automated workload, or its automated work process. So, when you send an email campaign and you click on certain elements, I can as the creator of the email, link something with that that thing. So, a trigger happens for another email or a certain action to be sent back to the person. So, for example, a lot of companies use it in the case you, you go to a shopping, an online clothes store and you put something in your cart, but you decide not to buy it, but the items are still there if the items are there for a certain time, company can send an email 3 days later and say, “Are you still interested in these items?” to keep engagement and to keep… I’d say people’s eyes on their business. So just having that, I guess, power, or having that, seeing that sort of work process happen on other end was really cool, because I was like, oh, and on this business side… Now, I know, like what’s going on. 

Nora Mortimer: And is that a skill that you’ve learned here at UITAC, or from like your degree? 

Kiana Gerhart: I’d say a lot of the things I’ve learned in theory in my degree about these like automation messages. And now I’m putting it in practice in UITAC. So I thought, that’s really amazing that I have this opportunity to use my degree. I think a lot of people are getting degrees, and they’re not able to use them at all. So I’m glad that I’m putting my money into work that I spent. 

Nora Mortimer: Yeah, what about a particularly challenging project kind of the flip side or is it like the feedback that you get on projects like, what is the challenging part of your job? 

Kiana Gerhart: I’d say y’all are really great at giving me constructive feedback that makes perfect sense like I’ve never felt the feedback that y’all gave me was too much for me to handle. It was, oh, yeah, that totally makes sense what they’re saying, especially because, I think the most challenging thing is accessibility. First, I didn’t really—wouldn’t say—care, but I didn’t know of its existence this accessibility design accessibility. Because I can see fine you know, but Nora, Angela, Amber, all the members of the UITAC team have said, oh, yeah, you should focus on design accessibility, making sure that people can see. Like, because of low, level vision or something like that, making sure the colors are fine, the design of the text is good to read. I think learning about that is, putting it into practice and making sure that all of our stuff is pretty for everyone to see, but also visible. I think that’s really something that I’m glad that y’all are putting into my brain, because now I’m looking at designs and like the world, and that’s gonna be hard for someone to see. Someone can’t see that or someone can’t read that. And I thought, well, as a business, something that’s really important to make sure that your customers are able to see your products, to see your it’s everything that you put out. 

Angela Thompson: Based on your experience, what do you think it takes to be a successful intern at UITAC? 

Kiana Gerhart: I would say, to be a successful intern would just be to have this fervor for curiosity, and having, I guess, something assigned to you and doing it to the best of your capability first of all. Also like asking those questions. If you have those questions and if there’s something extra that you think, oh, maybe so. They said something like this, maybe I can do something else instead, so just adding that to it. And I think y’all are very receptive to whatever product we’ve created as an intern or as a contract employee. So really, I think it’s just going a little bit, even just a little bit above what your expectation is, and just asking those questions. And I think that would be that would make you a successful intern. 

Nora Mortimer: Yeah and so, if our expectation levels are here, how do you measure success of going above expectations? 

Kiana Gerhart: I just say it’s more like you can deliver a base product of something like whether it be a post or things like that. But to go, I think above and beyond would be is there a design element that maybe you can add to make it a bit more fancy?  Or is there like something that you can do to make it better that they already have? How can you refine it like, what sort of things can you do to make it easier in the future for these sorts of things to happen or with those sorts of things? If that makes sense. 

Nora Mortimer: Yeah, I think that does. 

Angela Thompson: Do you have an idea or product, or something you want to create that’s kind of in the back of your mind, but you’re thinking, “Hmm, I’d like to do this?” One day, I mean, the podcast has been in the back of my mind for a while. Nora and I have talked about it for a while. So, this is kind of that for us. Do you have anything in mind that you’d like to work on or create, or that you’ve been thinking about Kiana? 

Kiana Gerhart: I think because we have like 2 teams. And you start publishing, the marketing team really and content team where the content team focuses more on creating like more the blog articles, or that’s one of their roles. I wanted to kind of get a grasp, a better grasp on what the content team does. So maybe in the future I can help better connect the marketing and the content team to be more seamless in a way. Does that make sense? So maybe one day, if I can have a role of the content intern for a few, just to make like an article, or see what sorts of roles and responsibilities they have... I think that could be cool. 

Nora Mortimer: Yeah, I think I know a lot about the publishing process, I don’t know anything about marketing process or sales process, but we do have some people on our team that are wanting to cross over. They intern, maybe as marketing one semester, and then it’s like content the next? So I think a lot of the cross will help but yeah, maybe that’s what we do next year, sometime, when things wind down, you and I swap positions. 

Kiana Gerhart: I think that would be really cool. And then we can do like a video of our experience, or a blog post, or something that’ll be fun. 

Nora Mortimer: Is there any long-term goals that you have for your career that maybe branch outside of UITAC? 

Kiana Gerhart: Oh, that’s a great question. I think I guess my long-term goal is to first utilize my degree in an even better way like, make sure that I can apply it on whatever job I get. I think that’s one of my long-term goals to always have this degree in use, because I spent a lot of time and effort in getting it. But I’d say, I think having a job or something that helps people is—it’s a very broad goal. But to always to put people in the forefront of that… helping people making sure that my job is meaningful in that aspect. 

Nora Mortimer: Yes. Sorry for the cat disruptions. He was napping and being so quiet and well and now, he’s woken up from his cat nap and needs a little loving so you might see some ears. Sorry. 

Angela Thompson: That’s okay! My dog’s been poking me in the side: “What happened? Why aren’t you paying attention.” 

Nora Mortimer: Yes, yeah. No. I love that long term career. You did say earlier that a lot of people might not be using their degree. But that’s always been something that I really also tell my parents like they’re like, okay, well, maybe go get like, you know, this kind of job or this kind of job. I was like, yeah, but that’s not what I want to do you know, I really like sociology and the content side, not the research side. That might be where the money’s at, but that wouldn’t make me happy. As you know, kind of sticking to your ideals about what to do with your future. I think that’s a good takeaway. 

Angela Thompson: And you know, I think people often, I mean because I had the same questions when I got my degree. I teach. I’m not a big fan of doing research. And there were a lot of people who questioned like, you know, you’re a sociologist, you need to. You know, research is where it’s at. I’m like, no, not actually teaching and developing material and content. I think that’s way more interesting. And I think it. It does help people. I think it opens people’s eyes to seeing the world and society in a different way different than what they may have grown up seeing or expecting, or assuming. And I think for a lot of researchers, their research often makes it to the journal, but doesn’t go much further than that. And so I really wanted to be in a position to, to go further than that, to make it practical, for people make sociology practical. So well, Kiana, it’s been wonderful meeting with you today. We are so happy that you are part of the UITAC team and thank you for being our first Open Notes Podcast guest or victim. Either way we appreciate you taking the time to meet with us. Nora, do you have any closing thoughts. 

Nora Mortimer: No, I think this was wonderful. Instead of victim, I’ll use guinea pig. 

Angela Thompson: There you go! 

Nora Mortimer: But yeah, this is really great. I am excited to see how, because you’re also responsible for editing, so I’m excited to see how you edit, and then I will get a transcript out also for accessibility. So the filming might be over, but the process never ends. 

Kiana Gerhart: Yes, that’s true. Yeah, thanks for having me. And I hope this is just the first of many in the Open Notes Podcast. 

Angela Thompson: Here you go! 

Nora Mortimer: Thank you. Bye. 

Tune into the next episode where…  

In episode two of the Open Notes Podcast, Nora Mortimer, the content manager at UITAC Publishing, discusses their journey into higher education and publishing, including the decision to switch from biochemistry to sociology.