Hanna Surdi: First-year student assisted by scholarship

She’s wanted to be a pharmacist since she was 9 years old, so even three quizzes the first week of classes and being a night owl who has to set the alarm early hasn’t stalled Hanna Surdi’s entry into the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

The first-year PharmD student from Rochester, N.Y., admits it’s tough to get up in the morning, but she’s napping whenever she can!

Surdi earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Binghamton University before enrolling in the pharmacy school. “There’s been heavy course material from the beginning — it’s a lot right off the bat! — but I felt a little more prepared with my biochemistry background.”

But it was earning her bachelor’s degree at Binghamton that originally had her planning to go elsewhere to pursue her PharmD degree.

“I interviewed everywhere in December and didn’t want to stay in Binghamton,” she said. “I wanted to try someplace different. I loved the school and had a great interview experience, but the downside was that I didn’t want to stay here for another four years.”

Surdi opted to attend a school near Buffalo that her older brother had graduated from, and had even put down a housing deposit.

Then she got the call. She was offered the Schorr Family Foundation Pharmacy Scholarship, established in memory of Max and Sarah Schorr by Schorr Family Foundation trustees Jennifer Brink Schorr, MBA ’81, and Lawrence J. Shorr ’75, MA ’77, LLD ’09. The scholarship is awarded to a student who attended Binghamton University as an undergraduate, and Surdi would be the first recipient.

After “stressing for a month” and reconsidering her choice, Surdi accepted the scholarship and “all the pieces fell together,” she said.

“I’m happy to be here,” she said. “It is sometimes very stressful, but I’m doing well academically. For my undergraduate degree I didn’t connect with the material as much and wasn’t interested in spending all day studying. Now, I’m studying about what I’m actually going to be doing and am doing well on all my exams.”

She’s also a fan of the faculty. “The professors actually know our names and see us as more than kids in college, but as actual professionals and they want to help us as much as they can,” she said.

Surdi doesn’t remember what specifically sparked her interest in pharmacy at such a young age, but she used to travel with her mother at times and met interesting people. “We went to an anesthesiologist’s house and they’re rich and I thought, ‘I want to do this,’ but then I realized how much schooling was required and knocked that out.

“Then I met a pharmacist and the one thing I always knew was that I wanted to be in the medical field,” Surdi said. “After I met [the pharmacist], I was talking to my parents and said, ‘That’s what I want to do!”

Surdi’s older brother also decided to become a pharmacist, but she had made the decision first. “He was coming up on the age of going off to college and trying to figure out what to do,” she said. “He had always wanted to do something in the medical field as well. We’re both proficient in the sciences.”

Surdi’s brother, in fact, assisted her in putting her white coat on during the School of Pharmacy’s White Coat Ceremony in August.

Surdi played sports in high school, and worked for a few years at a trampoline park, but spends most of her time now studying or just trying to relax. “If I have the energy, I’m very artistic and like to create. I paint, draw or embroider,” she said. Embroidery is a new hobby an when she’s painting, she prefers acrylics. But her creativity knows no bounds because in her International Baccalaureate art classes in high school, she worked in mixed-media.

A typical day for Surdi, however, starts with getting up just in time to make the two-minute drive to campus rather than the 10-minute walk so she can grab a few more minutes of sleep.

“That’s my big thing,” she said. “How late can I sleep in and still get everything done?

“I always hated naps and would only nap if I absolutely had to, but now it’s part of my daily routine because I only get 4−5 hours of sleep a night,” she said. “I wake up, go to class, come home and nap, get up and study. I’m functioning so I’m making it work.”

“Caffeine has no effect on me,” she added. “My problems would be solved if could drink coffee!”

Surdi’s favorite class at the moment is self-care because she’s able to implement the information she’s learning right away. For example, she recently took a test in the class, then went to work — at the CVS on Riverside Drive in Johnson City, N.Y. — and was able to help three or four patients thanks to her self-care studies. “That’s exciting,” she said.

Like most of her fellow students, Surdi is taking a wait and see approach to her final career path.

“Everyone comes in with a general idea and hospital pharmacy has been where I’m most interested,” she said, “but I only have retail pharmacy experience so I can’t yet say for sure what I want to do.

“I learn by doing. I know there are so many other options, so I look forward to my IPPES [Introductory Pharmacy Practice Experiences] and APPES [Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experiences] to try different things and learn what the options are,” she said. “I’m very much interested in applying for residencies, so that’s my definite first stop, then where I go is up in the air.”