Blog Challenge 2: Cheyeanne Perez

Blog Challenge 2, interviewing a grad student, Nick Ferraro

Questions asked

Year graduated high school?

Favorite color?

Favorite food?

Favorite holiday?

Costume worn freshman year of high school while trick or treating?

 

What classes do you believe provided you with the most knowledge?

Do you have any words of advice for incoming freshman? 

Any advice about what groups to join and when?

How would you describe college to someone who is going for the first time?

Why did you choose to come to Duquesne University?

What did you want to do at first? What changed your mind?

What accomplishment are you most proud of?

Lessons have you learned from going to college?

Is there anything thing you would have changed to better prepare for college?

What are you future plans?

Biography/interview

 

Nick and I both went to the same school so I found it only reasonable to interview a fellow Mckeesport high school student that graduated in 2010.

To start the interview out I started with simple little questions to break the ice and let him get more comfortable to have better answers.

Nicks favorite color is bright red, not just typical red, but vibrant original red. His favorite food is spaghetti and his favorite holiday is Christmas. He even remembers what he worn his freshman year of high school to go trick or treating, which was just a typical scary mask with a black shirt and black pants.

After asking the simple questions I asked more about his younger high school years and advice he would have for high school students.

For personal knowledge I wanted to know what classes could possible be beneficial from high school to help with the college transition and he explained that any advanced class will help. "They give more work to prepare you", "it helps you gauge your work load and prepare for how much you have to study". Nick did not  really know what to say as advice, he says that it is hard to just choose one thing to say when there's so much he could tell people, however, he would advise to just stay balanced with everything. Be balanced with school, work,study, and leisure. He also said that as an incoming freshman there is no need to really join any thing, just to stick with school at first until you get more comfortable, then you could join the honors programs that go along with your major. To students he would describe college as just going by fast but some times it take forever but you do not realize what all you have really done.

Then I focused more on his college experience and career path.

Nick chose Duquesne University because he really like being close to home as well as working in Dr.Cascios lab. At first he wanted to be just a regular doctor and become a orthopedic surgeon but after summer research he realized that was not for him, especially after seeing an open heart surgery, he realized that he did not want to have all the pressure of a surgeon. Throughout college his biggest accomplishment by far is just doing well in his classes. He feels that it shows that even though other do not have to study, he does study and still is just as smart as anyone else. The biggest lesson he learned from college is definitely that "you can still excel in multiple things if you learn time management". After being in college he realized that there are a few things he would have changed in high school to better prepare for college, the biggest thing being that he should not have taken so many study halls his senior year and taken more classes just to do it. His future plans include getting his PhD and just getting a simple job some where using the skills hes learned simply just working in a lab with a machine.