Pat Mead ’22

Why UNE

I stopped at UNE to visit on my way to see [another university]. I took a tour with Admissions. We walked around campus, and it was pouring rain, but despite that, it was the best tour that I had compared to any other school that I visited. I ended up coming back to visit UNE the very next day and walking around again when it wasn’t raining. I could immediately tell it was the right fit for me.

It took me a while to figure out what I really wanted to do with my life, but I realized that physical therapy is the route that I want to go. I like the holistic approach to medicine that the health, wellness, and occupational studies major offers.

I've really enjoyed how I get to take not only the general science classes but also so many patient-care-centered classes. We learn a lot about understanding the things that are going through the patient’s head. I feel like some majors are very straightforward and teach you what you need to do in steps like A, B, C, but when you’re actually dealing with patients, it’s never a concrete situation. You’re always going to be dealing with people’s different personalities, so we’re learning how to be ready for that as much as we can. It’s important to be trained on what to do in many different situations with different types of patients.

Beyond the Classroom

I actually started my own club at UNE called the Be Like Brit Club. It is based around one of the charities that I worked with in Haiti, the Be Like Brit Foundation, which commemorates the memory of Britney Gengel. She was a college student at Lynn University, and in 2010, she went down to Haiti on a service trip. She texted her parents something like, “Oh, I love it here. Everyone's so nice. I want to come back here and start an orphanage,” and three hours later the big earthquake hit. Britney ended up dying alongside about a hundred thousand Haitians, so her family decided to fulfill her last wish of starting an orphanage in Haiti.

Right now, the club is trying to get together the funds for a Haitian hot chocolate drive. They have their own special version of hot chocolate, so we’re going to buy some and then sell it to raise money for Be Like Brit.

I’m also involved in the philosophy club, which I really enjoy. We talk about different subjects. Last week, we had a meeting where we discussed, “What is love?” since it was close to Valentine’s Day. We tried to define what love was and had an interesting discussion. Next week, we’re talking about the topic of immortality and whether or not we’d want to be immortal.