Meet Nakia: Director, new student orientation, mom of two children, ages 6 months and 4

“Be easy on yourself and others, these times are unprecedented and there is no guidebook.”

Nakia L. Eckert, director, new student orientation

• What do you do at HACC?
  Admissions counselors do a little bit of everything! My primary responsibility is to work with prospective students and families to educate them about opportunities at HACC. I also work closely with school counselors, students in the dual enrollment/College in the High School programs and their parents. The most important thing I do is work every day to establish HACC as a top-notch educational and community resource and provide quality service to our students
   
• How old are your children?
  I have a 4-year-old son, Harrison, and a six-month-old son, Hayden.
   
• How are you effectively juggling your professional duties and your personal duties of having your children at home while you work?
  My husband is teaching 7th-grade English online, teaching online at Millersville University and getting his doctorate. Needless to say, we have a lot going on right now. We post our weekly schedules in the kitchen on Sundays so that we know what is on deck for the week and we employ our world-famous “tap-in/tap-out” system: One person works while the other person rotates an activity with Harrison or puts Hayden down for a nap.
  
  We talk each night and each morning to make sure we are on the same page and we still have to touch base during the day as things happen. For example, recently I had a Google Hangout call that crashed Greg’s livestream class and as he was texting me from the basement, I had to abandon ship and call the student from my cell phone so he could finish teaching. I make a lot of calls with Hayden on my lap. The admissions team is very familiar with both of my kids on our Zoom meetings. Overall, everyone (employees and students) has been overwhelmingly gracious and understanding about everyone's situation. I am very impressed and appreciative.
   
• What tips (things to do and things to not do) would you offer to other parents who are struggling with this?
  Make a schedule for the adults, but try not to worry too much about scheduling your kids (if they are really small like mine). Things change on a dime and even though your child loved his math workbook yesterday, today he's not impressed, so let them do something else! I had to learn that the hard way the first week.
  
  Also, the silver lining to all of this is the beautiful weather, so get outside as much as you can! I have also been casting the net wide and connecting with people I haven't spoken to in much too long. Re-establishing social connections that get lost in our daily grind has been so uplifting. Be easy on yourself and others, these times are unprecedented and there is no guidebook. I know I will look back on this extra time with my kids with gratitude so I try to remind myself of that every day. It doesn’t work all the time, but overall, knowing that we are safe and healthy makes me feel at peace.
   
• Is there anything else you would like to share that we did not ask?
  Thank you to my entire Admissions team for being so understanding of my situation and waving to my kids during our meeting. I really appreciate it!