
Humans of Hampshire College
Humans of Hampshire College was established to showcase the unique lives of the many different people at Hampshire College. Inspired by Humans of New York, the main purpose of this page is to allow Hampshire students, faculty, and staff to share their stories and to celebrate Hampshire’s diversity.
Below are examples of my work of Humans of Hampshire College. These examples feature stories of experiences of students, faculty, staff, and alumni at the College.
www.humansofhampshirecollege.org

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I was on the phone. It was Christmas Eve last year. I was going in the Notre-Dame. I grow up in Paris. I was there with my friend. We were going in and my aunt calls me, yelling at me in Arabic. I’m at the door about to go in. The guy by the door grabs my shirt. I said one word in Arabic to my aunt. He said, you can’t come in. We had waited through the whole line. He looked at me and then threw me and told me, and said, “it’s always you, the dirty Arabs.” I was like, “okay” and I told my cousins. No one was surprised. I’ve been dealing with that from the first moment I stepped in France, even as a kid.
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August of 2016 and nd I never did this kind of work before, ever. It was through a company before RICOH. I was in the restaurant business for 30 years. I was burnt out and tired and cranky. Then I saw on Craig’s list there was a job listing for a customer service position in the copy shop in Amherst. It was temporary at first and I got hired. They promised me the world. They told me I would be running the site and have my baby. Then they didn’t get the contract and RICOH got the contract. They came in one day to scope out the site. My boss asked if I wanted to stay. I said, "yes". It was right before Christmas that year and here I am. I love it. My job before this was the Dock Side restaurant in South Hadley. And when you’re in the restaurant business, it’s very time consuming. You have to be there when it’s busy and you have to be there holidays and weekends. I lost a lot of time away from my kids when they were growing up. I was doing double shifts Fridays and Saturdays. And the way I look at it now, waitressing is a young women’s profession.
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Originally, I got Bishop after an incident that happened in the Fall. He’s a Dutch Shepherd. It’s a very smart breed. The dog will test you and see what it can get away with. So you go through a few months of bonding and start realizing how difficult it is in the beginning. There are occasions I feel like I’m talking to a person. For instance, he learned how to open a ziplock bag and ate all of his treats. He got it from the top shelf and he was just eating his treats. There was one time I did have a serious panic attack. But around the time, it was halfway though the first month I got him. He didn’t know what to do. His vest was on the hook in the closet. He jumped up and managed to get his vest off the hook and threw it at me and tried to put it on himself. He got his head in the loop. For how he acts without his vest, it was hard to comprehend originally.
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I teach screenwriting, documentary production as well as narrative, experimental film, and seminars on representation, death and dying and on city as character. I have created over the years a rich portfolio of classes that stem from my own research interests and practice, which makes teaching all the more interesting to me. I think Hampshire College is a very special place and have grown to love it. I particularly like working in teams with students and colleagues from all kinds of academic practices. I really respect the way students learn here and how they engage with you with what they are working on. — Patricia Montoya, Visiting Assistant Professor of Video, School of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies (HACU).
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I feel slightly safe being openly Jewish outside of Arizona. There is a system that rates cities in the United States: the higher the number the safer you are. Last I checked, Tucson was in the 1st percentile of most dangerous cities in United States. I remember the Gabrielle Giffords incident was only three blocks away from my house. It was in a parking lot outside of a Walgreens near a Safeway grocery store. I’d grew up hearing gun shots or fire works. Either way it was illegal and someone probably ended up dying. I used to get AMBER alerts on a monthly basis. My situations were different than most of the locals'. I felt unsafe for other reasons. You learned not to walk alone at night without a knife and always tell someone you’re going out. I know that a former classmate of mine in high school was shot to death in her own home, as was my cousin, although she lived in California. But it’s sort of a part of my life at this point: gun violence. I’m for extreme gun restrictions. You know, having to register and go through intensive background checks. All of these restrictions because if we don’t change anything, the death rate is going to go up.
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I started working at Hampshire College April of 1975. My job then was temporary painter because a full time painter got hurt. Then they had a problem with the painter and got rid of him. So they hired me. I went from temporary to full time. 43 years I’ve been a painter. They only had me down for 42 years. The first year I was temporary and they didn’t include that. That got me down starting as 76, not 75. 15 years later, they hired another painter. But then they needed more support. So that’s why I got to be the foreman. Read the full, special feature story at www.humansofhamsphirecollege/blog/woodsy