Devin Jozokos '22

Why UNE

My family spent a lot of time in Maine in the summers…we took a tour of [UNE]. It was a bike tour, and it was really nice. Such a cool experience. UNE is a very unique place, and I knew I wanted to go here.

I find it really great that all of my classes, even the general ones, are geared toward my major. The physics class that I took was a specific one for med bio majors, so it ties everything into med bio. You really see the connections being made that way. It’s a way to fulfill the core components that we’re going to need to know in the medical field. Our professors have a unique way of presenting the information so that it’s easier to digest as a pre-med student, and I’m grateful for that.

I hear a lot of my friends at other schools say things like, “my professor's awful.” They complain about the way that their professors are teaching, and I have just never had a bad professor at UNE. All of my professors have been so awesome and really, really helpful. They are dedicated to what they’re teaching and to their students. I would say that my favorite thing about UNE is how wonderful the professors are.

Diverse Interests

Philosophy is a great subject to expand your mind, and it can be applied to any field, especially if you focus on philosophy of science courses. I took a philosophy of biology course where we discussed how we, as humans, defined what an organism is and where one species starts and another ends. Discussing these concepts changes your brain to think in a new way where you don’t just take someone’s word for everything. You start to think about how these ideas came into place and why they’re here — and the fact that they might be wrong. It helps you realize that there are other ways to frame ideas.

I can apply a lot of what we talk about in philosophy to med bio. I’ve taken courses with a professor who is a philosopher of race and humanization, and a lot of that has applied. For example, we’ve talked about humanization and the medical fields. Learning the metaphysics of race has been really eye-opening for me.

Global Opportunities

I spent the spring of my sophomore year in Morocco, and it was just awesome. If anybody’s even thinking about going to Morocco, I recommend it. It is an incredible experience. Since UNE has a campus there, you are getting the same education you would here in Maine at the same price. Plus you don’t have Friday classes there, so you get to go out and explore the world.

My favorite trip that we took was when we went to the Sahara Desert. We got to walk around the desert and ride camels. We got to sandboard in the dunes and sleep out in the middle of the desert for the night. In the morning, we woke up and rode four-wheelers around the dunes. It was such a fun experience, and being with that group, we got super close. Those people are still my closest friends at UNE. We still have a group text chat going from the trip. We all had such a good time together.