After little more than three months of writing columns about Duke’s employees, I have been able to get a better understanding of what it means to work at Duke.

It might be, of course, a very tiny grasp of what the overall experience is actually like. If you ask me, however, writing this column and all the things that the task implied—everything I learned, the people I met and the situations it triggered—have impacted my Fall semester, and I’m sure my overall Duke experience.

I started to write this column because I was intrigued by the stories I encountered in my visits to the Marketplace, the Great Hall and the Dillo. These were very intimate and human stories—sometimes funny, sometimes sad, sometimes boring. Whatever their content, it felt as if many of those stories were urging to be told, but I was skeptical that there would be an audience for them.

In many ways I was wrong.

The first thing that I learned is that the dynamics between employees and students are not as static as I initially thought. Or perhaps if they are, the reasons for why this happens are more complex than mere apathy. Not only are students busy running around campus all day, but a lot of the time employees are too. In most of the cases, it is not about people who are unwilling to listen to each other but about limited spaces and lack of time.

Nevertheless, I still think that there is something missing when it comes to relations between employees and students. I’m not sure if the missing element is interaction, debate or adequate spaces to discuss some of the issues I have been writing about this Fall. I do know, however, that whatever is lacking should become a priority in the list of issues the Duke community should address.

It would be beneficial for the University to devote more time and focus to student-employee relations. Despite most employees being black and Hispanic, I discovered that the diversity of their stories and backgrounds is rather astounding. Some of them are immigrants, some of them are here by choice, some of them love their jobs and others simply hate what they do. The employee population is so diverse that it reflects many profound issues about the world that we don’t think take place on campus.

For example, the question of race, which for some is irrelevant and stale, was something I came across several times this semester. I was surprised to realize that there are in fact a lot of racial tensions, and not precisely between students and employees, but within certain groups of workers. It caught my attention because rarely do we realize the complexities that take place behind the counter.

It seems to me that the dialogues we’ve been having about race have been focusing either on students only, or on students versus employees. These seem, however, to be issues that are common to other populations, and if together we can figure out a way to address them through a different direction, maybe we will be able to break stagnating conversations about race.

In regards to the people I met because of this column, I have just one thing to say: It was simply priceless. I became friends with many of the workers I interviewed and my everyday experience on campus and perceptions of the spaces that I often visit changed drastically. For one thing, I speak much more Spanish these days—both with Hispanic and American employees who have learned the language in their jobs. And given that it is my last column of the semester I would like to take advantage of it and thank them.

Finally, I learned a lot about myself. When I first proposed to write about this topic, I had visualized that it would be easy to interview employees every week and write their stories. Soon I realized that it wasn’t, and I was challenged in many ways. I wanted to approach a very diverse group of workers and for a while, as easy as it was to talk to Hispanic employees, it was hard to talk to those who weren’t.

I also questioned my reasons to write about workers, who might have not even wanted to be written about in the first place. In the end, however, I think it was worthwhile. And I hope you all think so too.

Andrea Patiño is a Trinity sophomore. This is her final column of the semester.