A Day in the Life: First-Year Students

One of the most common questions prospective students ask is, “What is it like to be a student in your program?” We hope to answer that, at least from the perspective of a first-year student at the University of Pittsburgh. Both inside and outside of the curriculum, each student has a unique daily experience. Here’s a brief look at that variety! 

This year has taught me that I need a routine in my life more than I originally thought I did! The majority of our semester has been online, which means I spend the majority of my day in my apartment. In the beginning of the year it was difficult to find the best way to organize my time outside of classes. I was so used to the routine of getting up and going to class (in undergrad) or work (before starting GC school) that without a specific routine of where I needed to be, I found myself spending the time between or after classes in ways that probably weren’t helpful to getting my work done. Once I forced myself to set a schedule of when I would be in class, when I would work on schoolwork, and when I would work my part-time job, I had a much easier time with the semesters. Now that I’ve made myself more of a schedule, I find myself spending the day going to class, studying, and/or working as a part-time genetic counselor assistant at Children’s Hospital, and even finding time to hangout with my classmates, work out, or catch up on episodes of RuPaul’s Drag Race and 90 Day Fiancé. Grad school in a pandemic is definitely strange, but it’s a unique experience and I’m happy to have such a great group of people to do it with. 
-Julia Knapo

Throughout my first two semesters in the Pitt program I’ve spent most of my time in classes and at my part-time job! We do the majority of our classes within the first year, and then do mostly clinical work during our second year. Almost all of our classes have been remote this year so I’ve been spending most of my class time in my apartment here in Pittsburgh. We did get to have a few classes in-person when cases in the city were low, which was a really great experience! Aside from classes I’ve also been spending time working a part-time job at Magee-Womens Hospital as a genetic counselor assistant. It can be tough to balance working a job with my school work, but I really value the time that I spend working in the clinic at Magee. Whenever I have free time, I generally like to try and explore Pittsburgh or spend time with my classmates! The pandemic has definitely made that more difficult, but we’ve been able to spend time with each other in socially distant ways which has still been such a fun time!

-Savannah Binion

It’s hard to sum up what “a day in the life” of a first-year student is, because each day feels totally different from the last, and each student has a different day. From the outside, it looks like I spend most of my time in my apartment, attending classes via Zoom while my classmates do the same from their apartments. While that’s true, our classes progress quickly, so it feels like every day I’m a bit more of a genetic counselor than the last, and it never gets boring. Our knowledge base builds upon itself and enables us to take on new assignments and tackle new parts of the genetic counseling process. We are full-time students, so this learning takes up the majority of my day or my week, but it still leaves plenty of time for other pursuits! I have a part-time work position as the student worker for the first-year class, and I love the flexibility of being able to choose my own schedule for that. I find time to explore the city, go on walks around nearby parks, and bake enough bread to feed a family. And we all find time to meet up for socially distant get-togethers!

-Bailey Sasseville