Grad Student: Chrisanda Sanchez

Name: Chrisanda (Chrisi) Sanchez 
Age: 24 
Year: third-year graduate student 
Major: audiology 
Hometown: Miami, FL

Her Campus: What is your position on campus? 
Chrisandra Sanchez: “I’m the graduate assistant for Aquatics and Risk Management at UF RecSports.”

HC: How did you get involved in this position? 
CS: “I got involved with RecSports in two ways: I was a participant with the club water polo team, and then by my senior year, I was an officer on the water polo team, so I got pretty involved from the sport clubs side. Then my freshman year, in 2008, I got a job as a lifeguard, and throughout my four years I worked…. When I graduated undergrad in 2012 and I got accepted to the doctoral program here, they were looking for a graduate position.”

HC: What is your favorite part of your job? 
CS: “It gives me a different perspective and takes me away from the hospital since my program keeps me in the hospital, where I have clinic and rotations at (UF Health Shands Hospital). It’s nice to get a break. It always takes me back to my favorite part of growing up, when I was always in the pool.”

HC: And the biggest challenge of it? 
CS: “Time management… It’s sometimes really hard to get my mind to switch gears. Sometimes I’ll go to the hospital and be in RecSports mode, and I have to like, ‘Nope. Take it off Chrisi,’ Then I’ll come from the hospital to the pool, and I’ll be in audiology mode.”

HC: Where do you see yourself in 10 years? 
CS: “In 10 years I hope to be in a hospital setting as a doctor — as an audiologist mostly — testing patients. I don’t necessarily know what population I want to be seeing, but I want to be in a hospital testing and diagnosing hearing loss.”

HC: What is your dream job? 
CS: “I think I’m pursuing my dream job… I hope that in 10 years I have my dream job! Ideally I would love to be a pediatric audiologist, working with kids and diagnosing hearing loss at a young age to help those kids go through life with access to sound.”

HC: What are your hobbies? 
CS: “Oh I have a lot of hobbies. I really love to play guitar and ukulele. I like calligraphy — I have all the inks and all the pens — and I love to draw. That’s definitely been a hobby of mine since I was really little. Obviously swimming and playing water polo, those have always been hobbies of mine.”

HC: Do you have any hidden talents? 
CS: “My hidden talent would definitely be my creativity and my arts because people don’t expect that from me. It’s like ‘Bam! Look what I did!’”

HC: Who is your role model? 
CS: “My parents are definitely my role models, but from a different perspective. I’m a first-generation college student and a first-generation doctoral student, so I was raised with the mentality that you develop through hard work and you don’t necessarily need education. My parents have succeeded throughout their whole lives without having a college education… I look up to that because, yes, I have a great foundation with school, but they have taught me that you have to work to get where you want; school isn’t going to take you there. They teach me things that I can’t learn in school.”

HC: Any advice to new students? 
CS: “Time management is the key to success with anything. As long as you find that balance, you can definitely succeed in every aspect. You just have to learn what you’re really passionate about pretty quickly, so you can focus on those things.”

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