Spring Break
A day in the life of a graduate student:
Anne-Lynn Gajadhar, School of Social Work
Katie Taylor
Issue date: 2/19/09 Section: Features
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Born in Toronto, Canada, Gajadhar moved to Greenville with her parents and younger sister in 1991. In addition to being Canadian, she is also half Caribbean: her father is from Freeport, Trinidad. She visits her relatives in Toronto and Freeport during summer and winter vacations.
Gajadhar is in her second semester of graduate school now. In addition to her regular school curriculum, she works part-time as a graduate assistant in the School of Social Work and is an intern at Prevention Outpatient Residential Transitional (PORT) Human Services in Greenville. She also is a cashier at a local restaurant.
Gajadhar's schedule is hectic. Her class sessions, internship and graduate assistant job all last throughout the workweek. She is awake and driving from her house to ECU or PORT before 8 a.m. every weekday.
Saturdays are spent cashiering. Sundays she spends working on school-related projects and homework or leisure reading.
As a graduate assistant, Gajadhar spends five hours per week coding and organizing data for a professor at the School of Social Work.
"I help the professor do research and code data. It's interesting because my undergrad research class didn't really make sense at the time," she said. "I was just reading about research methods but now I'm able to do actual hands-on research. Now by coding this data it's all starting to click: I understand the research methods better."
Gajadhar is also enrolled in 15 semester hours of graduate level classes. Full-time attendance in graduate school is nine semester hours.
"My graduate classes are more in-depth and involve more critical thinking than my undergrad classes did," Gajadhar said.
At PORT, Gajadhar works in the Children's Department under the Adolescent Outreach program. She goes out into the Greenville community working with her colleagues to help children make good life choices.
Gajadhar is responsible for teaching drug abuse and lifestyle choice seminars. These lectures are what PORT calls "Reconnecting Youth." Gajadhar's work at PORT periodically takes her to health fairs at local schools.
"I've been exposed to many different things from working with children in the community. I've applied what I've learned at ECU thus far into my work at PORT," she said.
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