Gina Gilson Class of 2024

As COVID necessitates the use of mostly online resources to help the prospective students make their all-important decisions of which optometry school to attend, here is another in this series of articles.

Gina Gilson is from Northern California. She considered staying closer to home to attend optometry school, but it was ultimately her SCCO on-campus visits that made the program stand out as her dream school.  Eryn Kraning, Senior Director of Recruiting and Admissions at SCCO, recorded this interview with Gina, a current first-year student. 

Click on the image to watch the video on Vimeo:

Also as part of this interview, Gina explains that she took a gap year before applying.  She describes what the transition has been like, namely getting back into being a fulltime student who must adapt to the virtual learning platform.  As an example, Gina explains that though she prefers a hardcopy day planner to keep herself organized, many of her classmates prefer digital methods of calendaring and notetaking.  She is now benefitting by learning how to make these  new digital platforms work for her.  She explains, “Because students share resources, we help each other learn how to be better students by making different apps and programs work for us.  Also and to keep the entire class on  track, our first-year class secretary sends out regular emails with on-campus lab schedules and reminders about other assignments that are due.”

With the eager help from her SCCO classmates, Gina explains in this interview how she has successfully made the transition to grad school.

Use this link to access more videos in this series.