What grade are you in?
I am a senior.
Oh, so am I. It is insane.
It is a little scary, yeah.
Are you as terrified as I am?
Kind of, I don’t know. I finally found a place to live where I’m going to be going to grad school, so that’s exciting. But at the same time, I am afraid of paying rent.
Yes! Where are you going to grad school?
I’m actually going to pharmacy school in Richmond, at VCU.
Oh, that’s so cool! I have one really good friend who goes to occupational therapy school at VCU, and they have this apartment on the Fan, and it’s beautiful. I spent a weekend with them once – it’s so nice.
Yeah, it’s a really nice place to live.
Are you from the Richmond area?
No, I’m from Suffolk, Virginia, so I’m like 50 minutes south from here. It’s south of Norfolk basically, about an hour drive from Virginia Beach.
So what are your thoughts on graduating soon?
Excitement. A little bit, well a lot of, nervousness. I’m excited to take the next step, I guess, in my life, because I spent four years here and I’m ready to check out the rest of the world, as much as Richmond is the rest of the world. But, I’m also going to miss going here, because it’s such a beautiful campus. I love just being able to walk around and not have it be a really big deal.
Would you say that’s your favorite part of William & Mary?
Yeah, definitely. The environment is really relaxing. I can feel like I can go outside and just get a breath of fresh air when I’m slightly losing my mind from all the work.
Yeah, I think that’s my favorite part too. I have a car this year, so being able to drive out past College Creek is really nice and is something you don’t find at other schools.
Yeah, exactly, you can drive to the beach and just chill or walk in the woods and it’s fine.
So, reflecting on your four years here, what would you say about William and Mary that really made your four years?
Definitely my major because I’m a neuroscience major, so I take a lot of…it’s an interdisciplinary major so I’ve taken a lot of different types of psychology classes and science classes, so that was really cool because I was always doing something different every semester. It wasn’t just like going to the next level of a certain curriculum, it was just all kinds of different things. So I really liked all the opportunities that I experienced through my major.
Did you always know that that’s what you wanted to study?
Yeah, I came here knowing I wanted to be a neuroscience major, so it was helpful that I knew that coming in because it’s a four-year major. Some people complete it in three somehow, I don’t know how.
What else did you get involved with on campus?
I’m in Alpha Phi Omega, the co-ed service fraternity. I’m an active brother, and that’s been really fun. I’ve worked here at the Campus Center Info Desk — it used to be the Candy Counter — for about two years now. And I recently this year got promoted to Area Supervisor. It’s been fun.
What does that mean?
Basically, I’m in charge of the other student employees who work here at the Info Desk, and I help with professional development and things like that and working with professional supervisors and staff. It’s been a lot of great experience.
So you said you’ve worked here for two years – have there been any interesting encounters?
Oh, boy. I’ve just had a couple interesting people. I won’t talk about the bad interesting encounters because I try not to think about them. There were only a couple but what was cool one time was I had to work on Blowout, which stinks, but for some reason, the pancake house walked through here. I guess they were doing pancakes for freshmen or something on Blowout and they walked through the lobby to go to Sadler to do the rest of the pancake stuff, and there was the guy in the pancake suit and they all had pancakes with them and they were like, “hey, why are you working?” And I was like, “Because I got assigned a shift tonight.” And they were like, “Do you want some free pancakes?” So I basically got delivered free pancakes at my job, and I really didn’t think that would happen. And also we find a lot of interesting lost and found items. This one time we found a sword. There’s a picture of me, one of my profile pictures is of me with the sword.
Like a real sword?
Yeah, like one of those expensive fencing swords. Like, somebody never came back for it and I don’t know where it ended up.
How does someone just lose a sword?
Those are the questions we asked ourselves a lot when it happened.
Those are huge too, and expensive.
Yeah, it was one of the real deal metal ones, like no-joke. So those are two pretty interesting things that happened.
That is insane.
It’s a very lowkey job. It was my first job, so it was a lot of experience that I didn’t have beforehand, so that was great. And it’s also very good with my schedule. So if you’re interested, we’re actually hiring!
I’m actually working for Auxiliary Services.
Well, if you want a second job! Oh well, I gotta try.
Do you have any advice for people like me who are freshmen?
Oh yes! Let’s see. Please take care of your health, both physical and mental. There is such a stress culture at this school, where if you’re not 100% stressed you’re not doing well, which is completely false in my opinion, and I’ve taken a lot of psychology classes, I’ve taken a lot of learning classes, and the brain learns best when you are well taken care of. You can’t push yourself too hard. You have to realize where your limits are. Get enough sleep, please. It’s 7-8 hours per night, please. And find an outlet, be it exercise or art or something like that, or just walking around. And always make time for friends. You gotta make time and take care of yourself, because if you take care of yourself then your body will do well, and then you will do well in school. So that’s my advice. Also as somebody who’s going into the health profession, I can’t stress it enough. I get worried by how many of my friends are like, “Yeah, I got five hours of sleep last night” and I’m like, “that’s not good. That’s not good.”
Humans of William & Mary 