Nicole EngBIOSC Senior, pre-med, and all around all-star Hi everyone, I hope you all had a great winter break. It was a really long one, so I hope everyone relaxed and found some productive things either for school or for your own personal health and well-being. When I was home for the long break, I got a job at a local hospital and did work as a temperature screener. Becoming a temperature screener is a great volunteer or work opportunity for people who are having trouble finding opportunities to work in a hospital. It is a good place to volunteer since lots of hospital volunteer programs are limited or not accepting volunteers now. I got experience with nervous patients in the hospital and staff who are tired of seeing so much sadness. Since last semester, I have not had any in person classes yet, everything has been online. I am taking physiology lab this semester, and this is the only one that may turn into a hybrid class later on in the semester. Since this lab is more interactive and sometimes more informative when physically performing the experiments instead of virtually doing then, we may have to go into the lab. Of course, safety is the number one concern and each group of three would only have one member go into the lab, and the students would be spaced out following safety guidelines. I assume by now everyone has adapted to online classes. I adapted pretty well to virtual classes here at Pitt, although my house in South Oakland doesn’t have the best internet connection, I’m still able to attend my classes and still be able to focus. If you are having trouble focusing and paying attention in class, a tip I have is to replicate being in class the best you can. I know it is tempting to attend class in bed with your camera off, but this makes it so easy to lose attention. If you even just have your camera on, this makes you feel more accountable and can force you to pay more attention since your face is seen. All of my clubs and extracurricular activities are still all remote. Club meetings have been less personal and at times seemed like obligations instead of things I used to be excited for. I think this is something a lot of people struggle with, so more clubs have been making the meetings interactive and shorter to keep people interested. If you are looking for ways to make your meetings more fun jeopardy and other online games are good ways to do this. I am a second semester senior pre-med student, and I am applying to medical school this year. I am also in the process of applying to gap year internships, jobs and programs. I have had to do some virtual interviews already. I get very nervous to interview, but I think my personable skills do shine through when I start to feel more comfortable. The good thing about virtual interviews is that you can be in a safe environment that you feel comfortable in. The bad thing is that interviewing really is about people seeing you as a person not just a resume, and this is something that is harder to do online and through a screen. Through being interviewed online, I found that the screen and virtual format took away a bit of my personality, from eye contact to facial expressions etc. so for me it felt a bit harder to really show who I really was. I combatted this by being a bit more expressive. I hope you all gained one tip from this post, and if you ever have any questions, or just want to chat, please stop by my office hours Monday 11-12!
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January 2022
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