A day at Rollins…

Sean Kennedy, 1st year HPM student

Today truly encompassed much of what I love about Rollins.

I woke up this morning around 8am, and then headed out to school from my nearby apartment with a coffee and smoothie in hand(s). I had a few meetings to take care of before classes started at noon— the first being a mock interview with career services. I can’t stress strongly enough how much the folks on the eighth floor have helped me to prepare for my summer internship interviews, and today was no exception. I learned a whole notepad’s worth of tips on how to market myself and speak to interviewers.

The second meeting of the morning was with Mark Conde, the director of Information Technology at Rollins. As Communications Chair for the Rollins Student Government, I am the liaison between the student body and IT. Mark is a really cool guy who has worked in the field of public health technology for a really, really long time. He’s a great person to head our IT department, especially since Atlanta is the health IT capital of the country. He also teaches public health informatics classes!

After that meeting wrapped up, I went to an optional Excel training lab at noon, where I brushed up on my functions for my public finance class so I could more easily analyze the data we were provided for our homework. I grabbed some lunch shortly thereafter from the Rollins Café, which has a ton of organic and local food, and a really wonderful staff whose dry sense of humor will cheer one up instantly. (If you stop in, I’d recommend the parfait, the chili, or the pesto pasta.)

I met up with my friends in my public finance class at 1pm, where Dr. Kathleen Adams went over, with great clarity, the many interesting (and at times, shocking) trends in government spending on health care. Once lecture got out, I had coffee with my friends in the study/common area before heading to my final class of the day— Public Health Law — at 5pm. Our professor, Dr. Fred Shaw, is the Affordable Care Act advisor to CDC. His class is a favorite amongst most students, and the dude knows his stuff— listening to him lecture is always a rewarding experience.

At 7pm, I ran upstairs to career services one last time for an informational interview with the consultancy Deloitte, where I learned all about the summer internship the firm is offering. Deloitte Atlanta works closely with CDC, and they do a lot of great, really interesting work with the vast amounts of data CDC collects.

It’s 8pm by the time I get home, and I try to get to inbox zero while eating some chicken gumbo. I’m pretty tired, so I’m probably going to sleep instead of doing homework (but only after I finish this blog post!). Today was busier than most days, but it was also extremely rewarding. The opportunities provided by Rollins are incredible, and I want to take advantage of all of them.