As I’m slowly making the transition from life on River Campus as an undergraduate to life at the Medical Center as a PhD student, I’ve realized something — it’s a whole different world across Elmwood Ave. This became most clearly evident the day I scheduled my fall semester courses — 8 a.m. classes actually do exist, and not just in high school!

Any person walking around the River Campus would be hard-pressed to find someone other than an athlete, a ROTC member or a University employee alert and active before the mad dash of half-awake freshmen to 9 a.m. introductory biology. And even this is only in the fall semester, since most of them smarten up by the spring and opt for the 11 a.m. version of the same class. Over at the med center, however, parking spots are hard to come by after 6:30! Every morning on my walk to class, I watch in awe as cars line up sometimes in bumper-to-bumper traffic just waiting to get to work — meanwhile, most undergraduates are nestled snuggly in their beds for a good four more hours before finally making their way to Starbucks so they can stay awake in a class that coincides with many hospital employees’ lunch times.

When I first finished my schedule, I nearly cried. After making sure I didn’t have a class before 11 a.m. all throughout my senior year, I thought for sure there was no way I could make it through an 8 a.m. class, much less Biostatistics. But, as I continue to switch gears to graduate school life, I’ve come to really enjoy waking up with the sun. I start the day fresh and ready to tackle it, and I actually have many hours to get things done before becoming depressed over the fact that I’m in Rochester and it’s already dark out. I’ve even taken up the habit of walking through the River Campus around 6:30 a.m. every once in a while, and it’s quite a peaceful feeling. Looking back on it now, getting up as the sun was still rising as an undergrad may not have been such a bad idea after all — maybe even worth a try sometime.