2020 Grad Spotlight: Annabelle Pan

For commencement week, we’re featuring some of the students from the SEAS Class of 2020. Today, we feature Annabelle Pan, who majored in Environmental Engineering:

What advice would you give to incoming students?

There’s a ton of things to do at Yale. Everyone here, whether we’re very conscious of it or not, has to make hundreds of decisions, thousands of small (and big) sacrifices for what we care about. When facing tough choices about how to spend your time, I have a few morsels of fairly generic advice. 1) Do stuff that you find interesting, not just what your friend you made in the first 5 days is doing. 2) Whatever you try, give it the chance to excite you. You’ll meet people who are excited by the same things, and they’ll probably be cool, and it’ll probably be awesome. 3) Do frequent and unjudgemental temperature checks with yourself. Is what you’re doing meaningful to you? Enjoyable to you? Challenging you? Growing you? It is never too late (ESPECIALLY first year) to change things up if you just aren’t vibing with it, and it isn’t your fault if you don’t like something. You got to Yale because you like things and are good at them! Even if things don’t click immediately (which almost never happens), keep trying and you will find spaces where you belong. 

What are your post-graduation plans?

I’m planning to go to Colombia on the Parker Huang Fellowship to work with and NGO called Fundación por la Educación Multidimensional, specifically on their project to improve access to basic sanitation in Cartagena. Afterwards, I'll start medical school at Johns Hopkins in 2021. 

If you were to pick one thing that you most enjoyed about your time at Yale, what would it be?

I have enjoyed being around so many people who are so much like myself. On some level this is my narcissism. But it’s also that seeing myself in others is often the foundation of my relationships. The friends I’ve made here have taught me so much, it’s no exaggeration to say they’ve shaped and expanded how I understand the world. I’m really grateful to have been in this place where I walk, work, study, and live with hundreds of people who are all around the same age and stage of life, who care so deeply and widely about such similar and different things. It’s really weird and pretty special.