If Taryn Weinstein had any lingering doubts about moving her family from a New York City suburb to New Hampshire\u2019s leafy Upper Valley, they were settled on a recent trip back to visit family and friends.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were driving down one of the expressways in New York and my husband, who is a hardcore Long Islander, said, \u2018everything just looks so different here now,\u2019\u201d says Weinstein, MS, who became Geisel School of Medicine\u2019s director of Student Affairs several months ago. \u201cIt was a clear sign to us that \u2018home\u2019 was now in a different place.\u201d<\/p>\n
For years, Weinstein and her husband, both lifetime New Yorkers, had coped well enough with long commutes to and from the city for work and the high cost of living in Long Island, but that all changed after their two children (now ages 2 and 5) were born. \u201cWe were spending so much time commuting and on childcare,\u201d she says. \u201cWe wanted to change our lifestyle and give our kids a different environment to grow up in.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Geisel opportunity also gave Weinstein the chance to make a meaningful adjustment to her career path. \u201cFor many years, I worked in medical school admissions, which I liked,\u201d she explains. \u201cAfter having kids, I took a position closer to home working in pre-health advising for a college and found that I really enjoyed working with students more closely and forming a longer-term relationship with them. But I missed the medical school environment.\u201d<\/p>\n
At Geisel, she gets to do both. \u201cMy role involves working in a variety of ways to help keep the students happy, healthy, and successful in all of their endeavors,\u201d says Weinstein. \u201cI feel truly lucky to work with such an amazing, hard-working team here in the Office of Student Affairs and Diversity and Inclusion. I\u2019m inspired by their dedication and commitment to the students every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Weinstein loves the multifaceted nature of her job. \u201cNo two days are the same,\u201d she says, offering a few examples of activities. \u201cWe plan events like the weeklong Orientation for new students in August, which includes a community service day where students do volunteer work with local organizations, and the White Coat Ceremony in October. And we support student-led events like the national Physicians for Human Rights conference that Geisel hosted in early November.\u201d<\/p>\n
But activities don\u2019t have to be done on a large scale to be appreciated. \u201cRecently, we put out healthy snacks as \u2018brain food\u2019 for the year-two exams,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd several students popped in just to say \u2018thank you,\u2019 which was really nice. Those kinds of interactions didn\u2019t happen very often in the much larger medical school I used to work at. I\u2019ve been very impressed with the sense of community here.\u201d<\/p>\n
In another aspect of her role, Weinstein provides students with Careers in Medicine information, which involves disseminating specialty resources from the AAMC, planning workshops, and inviting speakers for \u201ccareer lunches\u201d who come to talk about their particular specialties. \u201cMany times, students can end up with mentors from these interactions,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Social activities, like the post-quiz field trips she organizes for first-year students, have helped make her own transition to the Upper Valley more enjoyable. \u201cFor example, I took them to Riverview Farm for apple picking in Plainfield\u2014that was so much fun, I took my husband and kids back there.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve settled in well as a family, and we\u2019re enjoying the area and all it has to offer,\u201d adds Weinstein. \u201cAnd with the recent staff additions we\u2019ve been able to make in our office, which include an advising and wellness coordinator, we\u2019re looking at some of the ways we can enhance our services to the students. It\u2019s a really exciting time to be at Geisel.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Taryn Weinstein, Geisel’s new director of Student Affairs, says the school’s strong community helped ease her family’s transition from the busy New York City area earlier this year. \u201cMy role involves working in a variety of ways to help keep the students happy, healthy, and successful in all of their endeavors,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":7742,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,1],"tags":[794,760,792,793],"class_list":["post-7741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-news","tag-medical-student-support","tag-staff-profile","tag-student-affairs","tag-taryn-weinstein","author-26"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/12\/TW-web.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4r3h1-20R","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7741"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7746,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7741\/revisions\/7746"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}