Photo Courtesy of Lilia Kerski

Disciplined. Driven. Diligent. As a Department of Public Safety student worker and full-time student teacher, Lilia Kerski has a busy schedule.

“My alarm goes off at 5:21 [a.m.] … I’ll teach three classes a day… and then I usually go to the gym or go for a nice run… and then I go up to DPS and work my night shift,” Kerski said about an average Monday.

Kerski is a senior political science major with a single subject teaching credential for history. While many students traveled over break, Kerski and her fellow student teachers continued to teach their own students as they follow their school calendar, not Pepperdine’s. With this busy schedule, Kerski demonstrates her key qualities of being diligent, adventurous, hardworking and driven, according to her roommates. She finds routine important as she schedules her day-to-day life but makes sure to have time for her friends. She does not let the stereotypes surrounding her on-campus job affect her.

Discipline

Her roommates described her as a disciplined person, and she readily agreed to the statement. Her routine is important to her, especially as she prepares for a career as a middle and high school history teacher.

“I’m pursuing a career that I’m going to have to start getting up early. So over the summer, I went on this very long, very disciplined progression of every two and a half, three weeks, I moved my alarm up fifteen minutes… By the end of the summer I was getting up at 5:15 [a.m.] every day,” Kerski said.

Her early morning start is important to her, as she drives from Pepperdine’s Malibu campus to Palisades High School to teach U.S. history and world history to juniors and seniors. She hears the alarm at 5:21 a.m. and rolls out of bed to prepare for the day.

“I like to be productive the first hour of the day to get the day moving,” Kerski said.

Her roommates attest to her early morning habits. Senior Georgiana Gibson has lived with Kerski since August 2017.

“She’s very disciplined. She gets herself up early every morning, works out every day,” Gibson said.

Professionalism

After she gets up, puts on “professional clothes” and goes to the high school for a 7 to 4 school day, Kerski returns to campus. Three days a week, her evenings include not only her daily run or workout but also a shift for DPS.

With many on-campus job options, Kerski said the atmosphere and work environment provided by DPS were key draws for her applying and choosing the position the first month of freshman year.

“It seemed like it’d be a cool, very professional environment to work in as a student… like it’d be the most real-world type experiences,” Kerski said. She wanted to work “with people who treat you like an employee as opposed to a student and more like an adult having a lot of responsibility.”

Professionalism plays a large part to her structured lifestyle as she likes to keep herself tidy. She wore workout clothes for the interview, yet still presented herself in a confident relaxed manner as her outfit was coordinated, clean, unwrinkled and the clothes were well taken care of.

Kerski, Gibson, and Sarah Parker, also a senior, live together in Lovernich. When they were looking for a potential fourth roommate, they described themselves as people who like to have fun, eat cake yet are studious.

Kerski said that the task-oriented yet fun-loving nature of herself and her roommates is why they get along so well. This driven nature is important to her, and she likes taking on responsibilities.

“Overall, just bottom line, professionalism, I think, is huge,” she said on how her DPS job has affected her and shaped her for her future jobs and workplaces.

Photo Courtesy of Lilia Kerski

The Future

Kerski enjoys teaching middle and high school grade levels and already has a job post-graduation. She will be teaching seventh-grade social studies near her hometown of Denver Colorado in Northglenn. She will begin teaching summer school in the middle of June and then transition into the academic school year.

While she has observed many hours of middle school, it has been a while but she is excited about the challenge.

“I did 60 hours of observation in middle school. So I know a little bit what it’s like, but it has been a while since I’ve taught middle school, so it’ll be a challenge for sure,” Kerski said.

Between graduation and starting her new job, Kerski will get married. She will tie the knot to Thomas Overmyer near the end of May.

She said that there are a lot of misconceptions of DPS overall, but that the people up there are very caring and great.

She said perceptions may change “if people were more aware or knew that it’s a really solid group of people who work there and care a lot about the school and about the students… A really really good, fun group of people.”

Starting so early with DPS, she never got those perceptions and she is glad. Being part of DPS since freshman year has shaped her college experience and she is pleased with their influence. She is happy with her time at DPS as she loves responsibility.

A great aspect is “the culture of professionalism within the department,” Kerski said. “They’re really fun people to work with, but it’s also very professional – you do have a lot of responsibility.”

Photo Courtesy of Lilia Kerski