Have you ever walked down the hill after classes on a Friday afternoon, looked at Taylor Lake, watched the leaves changing color and felt overcome by relief that the week was over and a new and exciting one was now approaching? Well, Mark Pettit, a senior from Albany, New York, certainly has and it is this very time on Friday afternoons that he falls in love with the Colgate atmosphere all over again.

As a pre-med, molecular biology major, an economics minor, an avid chemistry tutor, the President of Phi Delta Theta, a member of the Pre-health Organization, a participant in Community Council and an Alumni Memorial Scholar, Pettit is certainly an extremely busy and involved college student.

All this activity doesn’t stop him from taking full advantage of the extraordinary opportunities that Colgate has to offer though. He had poignant advice to younger students.

“Schoolwork might not be the most important thing,” Pettit said. “Instead, you should try to get as much experience as you can”.

Pettit lives by these words of wisdom.

As an Alumni Memorial Scholar, Pettit received a grant to conduct research on the origin of modern medical thought in Scotland, Italy, France, and Greece. Pettit claims that although his traveling included a bunch of red-eye flights over October Break and Spring Break, it was definitely worth it.

Pettit chose not to go abroad, partially because the grant enabled him to have an abroad experience without an abroad semester, and also because he didn’t want to leave the Colgate community and a chance to become President of his fraternity.

“The Colgate glow, for the most part, is pretty true and that just walking from one end of the quad to the other makes me feel like home,” Pettit said.

After working as a camp counselor over the summer, interning for the Department of Environmental Health and serving as a lab rat for Professor Belanger where he investigated protein shuttling across the nuclear membrane of yeast, Pettit decided that his goal in life is to become a physician. He hopes to attend medical school in the Northeast next year. Becoming a pediatrician is on his radar.

As an interesting fact, Pettit said he absolutely loves riding roller coasters, which seems to summarize Pettit’s motivated personality. He is willing to take risks and, therefore, he is bound to be successful.