By Alyssa Cuevas

Victoria Hopkins recently joined Florida State University’s English department as Academic Support Assistant. Her previous experience in academia spurred her to return to the environment at FSU.

In 2016, Hopkins graduated from Samford University, located in Birmingham, Alabama, where she lived until 2020. After living in Orlando for one year, Hopkins began to consider moving to the Tallahassee area.

I love the team that I work with. They're all really close and really helpful. I love being surrounded by people who are trying to gain knowledge and spread knowledge.

— Victoria Hopkins

“I was looking to get a little more out of the city and I started looking into FSU,” she said. “I'm used to working with professors in academia.”

She previously worked in the Global Engagement Office at Samford, which is ranked as the best value for a college education in Alabama, according to the university’s website. With a student body of around 5,000, Samford was a natural fit for Hopkins.

“I went to a really small elementary and middle school, and then I went to a really big high school and I felt kind of overwhelmed by it,’ she says. “So, I started looking into smaller colleges.”

Hopkins earned bachelor’s degrees in both journalism and mass communications and Spanish, majors she credits for helping her manage her job responsibilities.

“I must balance a lot of different things; double-majoring made me great at multitasking without losing focus,” she says. “With my journalism degree, I developed a knack for attention to detail. I am also able to hold my own with the impeccable grammar of my coworkers.”

In her new role, her primary responsibility is to help build the department’s course schedules, including classroom assignments. In addition, she handles textbook adoption, keeps records of assignments to faculty and grad students, and facilitates the English department’s interactions with the University Registrar.

Being back in higher education is not the only part of her new position Hopkins enjoys.

“I love the team that I work with,” she says. “They're all really close and really helpful. I love being surrounded by people who are trying to gain knowledge and spread knowledge. Just being around a lot of deep thinkers is great.”

Outside of work, Hopkins spends some of her free time exploring Tallahassee and the surrounding areas. She has visited Wakulla Springs twice and enjoyed the river cruise the park offers. Recently. she went to Tallahassee’s Fat Cat Cafe, where cats roam freely and patrons can play with them or even adopt one.

Hopkins and her husband have two dogs, a 12-year-old Shih Tzu named Scooter—"He'll be 13 in May, and he is my world,” she says—and a 5-year-old German Shepherd mix named Scarlette, a rescue pet.

“There was a cat at Fat Cat Cafe named Lazarus with a similar backstory to Scarlette, and it was so hard not to adopt him,” Hopkins says. “I would not be surprised if we added a cat to the mix soon, but Scooter's age can make him a bit grumpy with new animals. I love them both and treat them like my children basically.”

Alyssa Cuevas is a junior who is majoring in English-Editing, Writing, and Media, with a second major in Communication.

Follow the English department on Instagram @fsuenglish; on Facebook facebook.com/fsuenglishdepartment/; and Twitter, @fsu_englishdept