A few disclaimers (click here to skip ahead to, you know, the blogging):
This blog reflects my own opinions and experiences, and mine alone. While I am technically an employee of the admissions department, they do not review my blog entries before I post, nor would I be comfortable letting them (nor would they ask -- they seem to be pretty cool about this stuff).
As a representative of my department and the admissions team, I consider it my responsibility to help prospective students make informed decisions. That means, among other things, that I reserve the right to post critical perspectives on the school and my program. This program, like any program anywhere, may be a very good fit for some students and a poor one for others. As a part of my process before applying here, I spoke to alumni of the program – including both people who had a wide range of experiences. That was critical to helping me understand what I was committing to, and to helping me decide that the program would be appropriate and valuable for me.
At the same time: this blog isn’t going to be comprehensive. I will have plenty of opinions and experiences that will not be presented in this blog. Want to know them? Feel free to reach out to me, in the comments or by email.
Also, I should point out that there’s a huge limitation built into this blog: me. I’m one person, with one set of experiences and perspectives. And I don’t expect my classmates to sacrifice their time to guest blog for me (although I’d certainly be happy to let them!). I will, however, happily share questions from readers with my fellow students, with alumni, or with faculty – so if you want to know about something, and I feel like it would be more valuable to you to get a different perspective, I’ll happily reach out to others or help direct you to them.
On a different note, I’ve devoted a lot of the last four years (and some of my work in college) to getting to know the Philadelphia school system, and as you can imagine, I have a LOT of opinions about it – but I’ll try to keep this blog focused on the Penn program, and limit my commentary on schools policy and politics except where it directly pertains (for instance, it will almost certainly be impossible for me to discuss my student teaching experience without talking about the impact of school closings and budget cuts). I may, however, provide links to resources or commentary that seems like it would be valuable to prospective students.
And if I haven’t made it clear: feedback and questions are welcomed here. I’m expecting to be in a pretty intense mental space this year, so I may end up with tunnel vision and totally fail to cover important topics. Please let me know if that is the case! I’m here to help, and you probably know better than I do what kind of help you need. I’m also assuming that my readership will mostly be prospective students and their affiliates, but if there are other people who find this valuable, please make yourself known!
Alright. Let’s begin.
This blog reflects my own opinions and experiences, and mine alone. While I am technically an employee of the admissions department, they do not review my blog entries before I post, nor would I be comfortable letting them (nor would they ask -- they seem to be pretty cool about this stuff).
As a representative of my department and the admissions team, I consider it my responsibility to help prospective students make informed decisions. That means, among other things, that I reserve the right to post critical perspectives on the school and my program. This program, like any program anywhere, may be a very good fit for some students and a poor one for others. As a part of my process before applying here, I spoke to alumni of the program – including both people who had a wide range of experiences. That was critical to helping me understand what I was committing to, and to helping me decide that the program would be appropriate and valuable for me.
At the same time: this blog isn’t going to be comprehensive. I will have plenty of opinions and experiences that will not be presented in this blog. Want to know them? Feel free to reach out to me, in the comments or by email.
Also, I should point out that there’s a huge limitation built into this blog: me. I’m one person, with one set of experiences and perspectives. And I don’t expect my classmates to sacrifice their time to guest blog for me (although I’d certainly be happy to let them!). I will, however, happily share questions from readers with my fellow students, with alumni, or with faculty – so if you want to know about something, and I feel like it would be more valuable to you to get a different perspective, I’ll happily reach out to others or help direct you to them.
On a different note, I’ve devoted a lot of the last four years (and some of my work in college) to getting to know the Philadelphia school system, and as you can imagine, I have a LOT of opinions about it – but I’ll try to keep this blog focused on the Penn program, and limit my commentary on schools policy and politics except where it directly pertains (for instance, it will almost certainly be impossible for me to discuss my student teaching experience without talking about the impact of school closings and budget cuts). I may, however, provide links to resources or commentary that seems like it would be valuable to prospective students.
And if I haven’t made it clear: feedback and questions are welcomed here. I’m expecting to be in a pretty intense mental space this year, so I may end up with tunnel vision and totally fail to cover important topics. Please let me know if that is the case! I’m here to help, and you probably know better than I do what kind of help you need. I’m also assuming that my readership will mostly be prospective students and their affiliates, but if there are other people who find this valuable, please make yourself known!
Alright. Let’s begin.
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