Hello dear readers! I am excited to introduce my friend Aman Goyal to you this week! Like what I have promised earlier, I will continue to invite my friends in the cohort to be guest bloggers so that you will learn more about our Penn Journey from various perspectives. Please enjoy!
Brief Bio of Aman Goyal:
Aman is from Toledo, Ohio. He did his undergrad at Miami University of Ohio, so leaving Ohio was definitely nerve-racking but exciting at the same time. He is in the Higher Education Administration cohort and is a graduate assistant in the Office of Alcohol and Other Drug Program Initiatives. So far he has loved Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania but wishes he had more time to take it all in and go to all the events they have for students on campus and out in the city. Feel free to reach out to him via email at: goaman@gse.upenn.edu.
A (Dramatic) Glimpse Into the First Three Months as a GSE Master's Student at Penn
From August to September:
This first month was really just a blur of a lot of changes. Getting used to your dorm room at Sansom Place West which was convenient and small, and exactly what you expect for a dorm on campus for grad students when you aren't willing to spend a lot on living. Then, since you're a social being, you had to make a few friends and hopefully that will be easy with your cohort, as it was with mine. But you will need a few people outside of your cohort that do not know anything about your classes so that you can talk about something besides Critical Race Theory and Human Capital Theory. These would be the people you study with on occasion, go to when you want a break and to talk about life outside of school, to go out to a quick, last minute dinner with.
And of course there was the whole "getting used to your GA and classes." Twenty hours does not sound like a lot, but when you add in five classes it ends up being an adjustment to say the least. Managing your time, day to day schedule, and priorities seems pretty easy this first month because classes you are on top of all your class readings and assignments and you GA is picking up slowly because students are back on campus.
From September to October:
This next month proves to you that whatever system you had going the first month will have to change because now you have papers that are grad level, something you may not be used to (I certainly wasn't). You now have friends and a lot of familiar faces all of whom present opportunities go out and have an adventure, whether it be downtown in one of the neighborhoods of Center City, the arboretum, or the local Penn area where there is plenty to do if you find all the right weekly calendars. And then you start missing home during this month, you realize it has been a while since you've talked to family and friends, and so you try to make time for those conversations. Fall television is back so you try to make sure to dedicate some time to watch these because it is therapeutic after all. Your schedule and routine are being thrown off because everything is changing inside and out, just like the seasons.
But again, you figure it out. You talk to your cohort and they are feeling the same way which is a relief because you can sometimes feel alone in a new place, especially when you spend a lot of your time with books and your computer typing and researching for papers. You get your first grades and you start to see progress in your writing and analyzing skills, you impress yourself and you let yourself down, but you are learning, and after all, that's why you're here, isn't it?
From October to November:
You start realizing you are more than halfway done with your first semester, there are a lot of deadlines approaching, and you have projects at your GA that are exciting escapes from your school work. Instead of reading your coursebook you decide to spend a little extra time organizing your life. You start to look at job opportunities because you are already 1/4th done with the program and if you don't do it now, you'll be behind everyone else! You have your social life figured out somewhat, and you are still trying to balance talking to friends and family who are far away. Your life is a balancing act between your GA, classes, fall TV shows, career exploration, your Philadelphia social life versus your other social life away from Penn, and, oh yeah, sleeping and eating occasionally.
It feels like you might forget something and miss out on opportunities, and you will, and you'll have to start choosing what is more important every single day. The beauty of this part of the semester is that you are starting to realize your passions, what you actually want to do with the rest of your life, or at least next year! By this point you have history at Penn and memories, whether they be Hurricanes or Presidential Elections, you will never forget this place, this place that is beginning to feel like home.
(This may sound over-whelming, but I promise it's not as bad as it sounds! Some days you will feel like you are in over your head with work, but other days you will feel accomplished and like the scholar that you are becoming! No one said it would be easy, so why expect it to be? Accept the challenge and take it on full force, it's only a year after all! You can do it!
Thank you to Xixi for letting me express myself on her blog. Please feel free to reach out to me if you would like me to expand on anything, of if you have any other general questions!)
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