Sara Gianfagna

COL ’14
Age: 21
Hometown: Buffalo, N.Y.
Major: Biology; Minor: Psychology

What do you do on campus?
I’m an undergraduate TA for biology and have taught the same course six times now. I’m in Hoya Blue; as a member, I go to sporting events and I cheer. I am a student guard, I was on the club squash team, I studied abroad in Galway, Ireland, last year and I go to the Office of International Programs to help when kids are going abroad to do orientations.

What do you find most frustrating about Georgetown?
It’s frustrating that so many of my friends have different interests so we’re all so busy all the time but we can never all be together at the same time. It’s very hard to coordinate plans to get everyone together when we all want to do the same thing. A lot of my friends all don’t want to do the same thing because we have different interests so that’s a part of the problem as well.

What are your plans after Georgetown?
I want to go to medical school at the University of Buffalo. I’m not sure as to the field yet, but definitely not surgery. I think I want to have patients for a long period of time.

Is cura personalis embodied here?
That’s why I came to Georgetown – cura personalis, and that ideology. It’s found in Georgetown’s curriculums and teachers integrate it into their lessons, whether it’s in a biology class or an ethics class, I still get that. Students also embody cura personalis just in the sense that we’re all very well rounded people. It has to do with the admissions committee picking well rounded people. We play off each other, too; interests grow based on other people you meet. This idea of caring for the whole person encompasses more than just the educational aspects. Religion is present; having fun and socializing is also found. Cura personalis also draws a certain kind of person to Georgetown.

Where are you from? Compare and contrast it to Georgetown. Where are you more comfortable?
Buffalo, N.Y. The biggest difference is the number of languages that are spoken on Georgetown’s campus. Before I came, I knew I wanted this diversity aspect in my education and having international diversity was really interesting. In my high school we learned a foreign language and it’s because we were forced to. But here, one of my roommates’ first language is Spanish, so you get not only language but cultural perspectives.

What’s your greatest fear?
Fire.

If you could lead a protest on one thing, what would it be?
My senior thesis involves teaching grade 10 biology in a D.C. public high school, where I have seen firsthand how frustrating it is when teachers get blamed for students not succeeding, especially upper-level teachers. It’s not their fault that students aren’t performing. Firing teachers for students’ performance based on a standardized test when they’re in high school seems like a hopeless cause.

As a senior, do you have any regrets about your Georgetown experience?
I wish that I had done clinical medical research while I was here. I just saw senior presentations about it. I did research using students as subjects and I don’t regret that at all, but I wish that earlier in my career I took advantage of more research opportunities.

Interview by Braden McDonald