The Real Experience
Just like everything else in life, you get out what you put in. To be honest my last years in the house as a graduate student, I did not get to know all of my housemates or spent quality time with them to make it an amazing experience. I would never be home, because I will be in lecture all day and then spent my entire afternoon/evening in the library.
I spent more than 15 semesters in this scholarship program, but lived in different houses. During undergrad, I lived in a house with 30 other girls, it was the largest house, but that was the best experience compared to smaller houses. I don’t know if it’s the fact that I am now 25 and can barely tolerate anything or being in a stressful PA program, but sometimes I wanted to give up and get my own place.
My responsibilities
Living in this scholarship house was not a walk in the park. Every week I had a work job to complete, kitchen duty, monthly house meetings and I had to maintain at least a 3.0 GPA to keep my scholarship. The work jobs consisted of cleaning different parts of the house. My last semester, my work job was on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Tuesdays I had to clean the laundry room and on Thursdays I had to clean the Study Room. In addition, you have to choose to be part of clean crew or cook crew since we have a house dinner every day from Monday – Thursday. I was always part of clean crew just because it was easier and it was less time consuming. Every Wednesday I had to clean the kitchen after they cooked, but this is split between two of us. We also had monthly house meetings where we talked about cleaniness, different duties, and issues that were addressed. These were typically on Sunday and lasted about 30 minutes. Every semester we also had socials with other houses, we had a semester deep cleaning day, and different events such as thanksgiving dinners and Christmas Secret Santa.
The Struggle
Honestly, the hardships you have in life only make you stronger. I had a goal set that I will live here during PA school until I was done with didactic and that is exactly what I did. God only knows how much I could tolerate and he kept me strong. It was my first semester and I was super excited to be part of the Graduate house, it was a lot more chill than normal undergraduate houses. Only 10 graduate students lived here and the house was brand new. I loved my room, it was super spacious. However, I had no idea what the first semester of PA school was going to be like and what my roommate situation was going to turn out to be like.
My roommate had asthma, she would snore VERY loud, and I could not resist it, I could NOT sleep. I had days where I had to sleep in the living room, and days where I didn’t’ even sleep, yet I had to go to class and study the entire day. It was honestly the worst experience ever, I never knew I was such a light sleeper until this when I was about to give it all up. I started looking for places to move out and would call my parents with so much anger and frustration because sleep was literally the only thing I needed in such a stressful program. I was about to move out, but decided to talk to the coordinator before and we figured out other sleeping arrangements. Even though it wasn’t what I wanted, I sucked it up for that semester and decided to move to another house for the following Spring semester.
Living With Undergraduates
Because sleep was my number one priority and if I was not getting it in the graduate house, I knew I had to move out. Regardless of what other obstacles or issues I would have living with undergrads, anything was going to be better than not having sleep and that’s exactly what I did. I moved to another house that was right across the street from the Medical school. I loved living just footsteps away from school and being able to come home whenever I wanted. However, it was not perfect; living with other undergraduate girls was not easy. Maybe I was like them one day, but the level of noise was something else, I could hear everybody when I tried going to sleep and with my luck, the TV from the living room was right behind my room wall.
My roommate was an instagramer and a youtuber, she was a makeup artist and constantly had girls over to do their makeup, it was her side hustle. This meant we had to arrange her time in the room and my time in the room, which was literally the 1 hour nap I took daily. Yes, it was so much to handle, that’s why I would never be home. I would rather only come home to eat and sleep. Other than that I spent my entire days studying in the library because I knew I could not get anything done in this house.
How Much I saved
Despite my struggles living in this scholarship house as a graduate student, I am thankful I accomplished my goal of graduating PA school debt free. Doing this was not easy, but once I set a goal I am the type of person that does anything and everything to accomplish it and that’s what I kept telling myself, to just stay strong because the reward would come after. In this Scholarship house, we were only required to pay a utilities bill each semester, which was around $900-1,000. This included everything like internet, electricity, water, food, and other stuff. I did not need much, besides this since I also lived right across the medical school and there was basically no time to go out and spend crazy amounts of money. Luckily, my parents would pay this every semester and would give me $400 every month for me to survive and pay other bills.
Thankful
One of the things I enjoyed about living in this scholarship house was always having people to come to. I never felt lonely or sad during PA school. I always had people around me even though they were not my best friends, we would talk about our daily challenges and what not. I also loved the fact that I had a dinner to come home to from Monday - Thursday. As we all know time in PA school is money, so having this was awesome, because I never had to worry about cooking dinner and the meals were pretty delicious. I am also thankful for all my donors and the people that made this scholarship possible. I would not have made it this far if it was not for this program.
I have so much to be thankful for, not only during graduate school, but more so during my undergraduate years. I am thankful for the amazing friendships I gained, for the leader this program turned me into, the type of person I became, the struggles I lived, and how much of a well-rounded I now am. I learned to live with girls from diverse cultures and backgrounds, I learned to adapt to change and live as a team. This was certainly an education for life, and now I can appreciate having my own place a lot more than I would have before. I will never be a college student living with a group of girls ever again, I will never have any debt from college or graduate school, and for that I am forever thankful.
Is it for YOU?
If this is something you are interested in doing, I highly encourage you to ask yourself if you are willing to sacrifice your personal space, quite time, adapting to roommates, maybe not living under the conditions you normally or would love to live under, and if this is something you see yourself doing, I would go for it. This is certainly not for everybody especially not during PA school. If that’s you and you plan on applying to UF, FSU, or FGCU PA programs and you will like to learn more about this opportunity. You can click in the picture below.
