In undergrad, I quickly found a group of close friends and we spent four years living near each other in dorms or neighboring apartments. We had the advantage and convenience of living in close proximity and spending a lot of time together, which solidified our friendships. Grad school is just the opposite for me. The members of our cohort are living all over the city (I personally live about 15 minutes from campus) which makes it difficult to spend time together sometimes. We also all have different schedules, lifestyles, work responsibilities, and other commitments - I know quite a few people go out of town many weekends to spend time with other friends or attend important events. This also makes it difficult to bond as a cohort because the small groups of people who spend more time together form stronger friendships, and others who join in social events less often have fewer or different opportunities to connect.
My greatest challenge so far has been socially. Because my friends from undergrad are all still living in Philadelphia, I instinctively want to spend my free time with them. I want to continue to be a part of that group and keep up with our social habits and traditions. I want to remain in my comfortable and familiar life. But I've found that spending time with my "old" group of friends has been keeping me from spending time with my "new" group of friends in my cohort. This was one of my biggest fears when I began at GSE, and it has come true.
Since acknowledging this fairly recent realization, I have been trying to push myself to get out more with my cohort and attend happy hours, dinners, or other gatherings, but it's still a struggle every day. First, living a little further from campus has been tough. Often, my cohort members want to meet up at different places on or close to campus so I deal with the constant challenge of motivating myself to leave my apartment and make the trek there and back, which I don't really like doing at night. If seeing friends frequently outside of class is really important to you I highly recommend looking into living in Sansom Place while you're at Penn. Sansom is essentially a "dorm" for grad students. It has mini-apartments, the building is right on campus, and your friends will live next-door or down the hall! If I could re-do something in my grad school career so far, I would probably opt to live at Sansom instead of in my off-campus apartment - it's like having built-in opportunities for friendship!
There's also the added time constraint of school work that strongly influences my ability to be social. I often find myself passing up opportunities to go places because my schoolwork has built up and I need to get things done. Social gatherings can be a great motivator and reward to get work done by a certain time, but it takes a lot of discipline and time management skills.
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| Story of my life most weeks... |
This weekend, in our cohort, we had several events build up over a few days - birthdays for cohort members on Thursday and Friday nights, a football game on Saturday, and a pot-luck dinner on Saturday night. I made the logical decision that I couldn't afford to sacrifice the time to attend everything so I had to make choices. I decided to forgo the evenings out celebrating in favor of writing papers, and I had a group project meeting during the football game, but I bookmarked all of Saturday evening for the cohort-wide dinner. I'm really glad I made that decision too! So many people were able to attend, there was a ton of delicious food, and we had a great opportunity to bond as a group! We had a lot of fun and we're thinking of making it a regular event. I was too busy eating and talking to take any pictures of the food, but check out Wesley's blog to see all the delicious dishes - he's always posting pictures of food he makes!
GSE EVENT NEWS!
We have quite a few opportunities coming up for you to connect with GSE!
Our November Virtual Information Session will be taking place on Tuesday, November 12th from 4:00-6:00 pm Eastern Time. RSVP for that event here!
We are also hosting another Prospective Student Web Chat with current students and alumni on Wednesday, November 20th from 8:00-9:00 pm Eastern Time. RSVP here for this event!
If you're interested in learning more about the Urban Teacher Education Program at Penn GSE, we are hosting an On Campus Information Session on Tuesday, December 7th from 10:00am-12:00pm. RSVP for the UTEP session here.
And as always, we host Campus Visits every weekday. If you're available to come to campus you can meet with program managers, admissions and financial aid, current students, and take a campus tour. We kindly ask for two weeks notice to schedule a visit, but sign up here!
Hope to see you soon - virtually or in person!
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