Description:

Jelisaveta "Beka" Kojadinovic was a student-athlete at Rutgers from 2017 to 2021 on the Women's Volleyball Team. She was born in 1998 in Belgrade, Serbia. She began playing volleyball at the age of six and played at the club level in Serbia. In part one (September 14, 2021), she discusses her decision to come to Rutgers, transition to life as a student-athlete, experiences during the first two seasons playing volleyball at Rutgers in 2017 and 2018, and the new coaching staff in 2020. In the spring of 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic began, she traveled back to Serbia for six months and returned to Rutgers in the summer of 2020 for the fall season. She explores testing and practicing protocols in the fall of 2020 and her experiences during that season, which was delayed until the spring of 2021. She weighs her thought process about continuing volleyball professionally versus entering the workforce in Serbia or in the U.S. In part two (May 5, 2022), Kojadinovic talks about her undergraduate degree and master's in financial analysis at the Rutgers Business School and plans to return to Serbia to work as a data analyst, while also pursing professional volleyball in the future. She explores the fall season in 2021 and the relaxing of testing requirements and other protocols, both as an athlete and as a student. She also relates general sentiments regarding vaccines and mask requirements in Serbia. This oral history is a part of Paul Clemens and Johanna Schoen's research into Rutgers during the COVID-19 pandemic.