During their “summer break,” Hasan Syed and Brad Firchow both found ways to combine their academics and extracurricular interests at Oglethorpe with adventures a world away.
Hasan Syed ’17
Hasan Syed ’17, an Accounting major and Business Administration minor, took on a month-long solo backpacking trip this summer, covering 2300 miles in Western Canada, before starting his internship at KPMG in Atlanta, where he works on financial planning and enterprise performance management for a Fortune 500 healthcare company.
After he finished his finals at Oglethorpe, Hasan flew into Vancouver and camped, hiked, and even mountaineered in the expansive national and provincial parks in British Columbia and Alberta. “The simplicity, peace, and primal nature of the outdoors has always served as a great release for me from the fast-paced lifestyle of college, extra-curriculars, and work otherwise,” he said. “My ongoing love for nature and the outdoors played a huge part in this trip as it does with the time I spend with the OU Outdoors Club. I hope to bring back the experiences and new skills I gained from my trip and improve the club further with new event ideas this coming fall.”
At his internship with KPMG, where he conducts data analysis and helps prepare client deliverables, Hasan says his Oglethorpe experience has helped him in numerous ways. “I was well-prepared knowledge-wise due to to the strength of the accounting program,” said Hasan. “Likewise, the sheer amount of writing and client deliverables I’ve had to prepare so far has dulled in comparison to any of my Core papers. However, the best skills I’ve been able to flex at this internship have come from outside the classroom, such as the interpersonal skills I picked up as a brother of Sigma Alpha Epsilon or organization skills from the leading the Outdoors Club.”
Brad Firchow ’19 with his friend, Ariel
During his summer break, Brad Firchow ’19 traveled to Sacacli, Nicaragua to work in a hybrid medical, public health and water access mission organized by the Global Brigades, an international nonprofit that empowers communities to meet their health and economic goals through university volunteers and local teams.
Brad, who’s majoring in Biopsychology and minoring in Chemistry, got firsthand experience in service and medicine by working in the Sacacli community. Brad’s team established clinics in the region, assisted with a sanitation and hygiene project, and helped build a pipeline to serve the people in the region. According to Brad, his main motivation for joining the brigade was the ability to get hands on experience in the medical field while doing meaningful service.
“This experience really embodied Oglethorpe’s motto for me,” said Brad, referencing “make a life, make a living, make a difference”. “I was living; I was traveling somewhere I had never been before with some of my closest friends. I was making a living; I was exposing myself to the medical field in a way I never thought I’d be able to before actually having an MD. I was making a difference; I was working alongside community leaders and families in Nicaragua to improve their quality of life and to drive change in the areas they felt they need it most.”
Brad’s favorite part of the trip was when he met some local children, including a boy named Ariel. “He was somewhere between five and eight years old (he told everyone who asked a different number), and he was intrigued by seemingly everything about me — my blue eyes, my pale skin, my light hair, which he enjoyed pulling. Ariel represents to me what I think of now when I think of the word ‘curiosity’. He loved asking me questions, whispering secrets in my ear, drawing in my sketchbook with my shiny ink pen, and trying my American snacks—he thought licking a granola bar was more fun than biting it. Spending a few hours with Ariel was like going back to my childhood, and I will never forget him because of that.”
