Category: Danai Agakidou

Hometown: Thessaloniki, Greece

Agakidou is a junior majoring in Chemistry. She has been conducting research in Dr. Paul Wagenknecht’s lab since summer ’15 and she published her first research paper in the Organometallics Journal in August. On a daily basis, you will find her giving admission tours, putting on events with the Furman Creative Collaborative, or hanging out in the Trone Student Center studying, laughing, and being loud. She loves watching videos on YouTube, laughing, singing in other people’s cars, eating, and making friends. Oh, and she is proudly the only person on campus who can claim to be Greek but not “Greek.”

A guide to enjoying 4-day weekends #senior

aagakidou / / Danai Agakidou

Intro to your last college semester should be a class, where you learn how to modify your class schedule throughout your 4 years in college so that your last semester is full of impactful classes, and tons of hours of relaxation. For me, that “class” was offered by all my older friends, and I am of course here today to teach you how to properly do this yourself. As my friend, Nathan Mathai, once called this phenomenon, the 7 years of friendship at Furman are the best and worst thing that can happen to you. On the one hand, as a freshman you have senior friends that can offer you advice, and as a senior you have freshman friends that you can be helpful to. On the other hand, every year you either lose a bunch of your friends (as in they graduate), or you yourself become distanced from your friends that you could once find on Furman’s campus. Anyways, I am completely off topic, but HELLO I AM A MELANCHOLIC SENIOR SO I HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO BE ALL CHEESY AND MELODRAMATIC, K?

Okay. Here are the steps to success:

  1. Take AP/IB classes in high school. If there’s one thing I have to say saved me from being extremely busy 100% of the time, that was underloading for two semesters. I came in with IB credit for 3 classes, which saved me from having to take one HB class, and allowed me to underload twice. There are two types of intense classes for Chemistry majors: those where you have to study for 4 hours a day, and those that you have to make your lab your new home. I loved taking both of those types of classes (which were Bio-organic chemistry, and Techniques), but oh my lord would I still have my sanity/have stayed involved in all my extracurriculars/ have any friends if I didn’t underload during those semesters. Every major has its hard classes and you gotta be prepared to deal with those. Also useful if you are interested in double/triple majoring!
  2. Take MayX courses. Whether those are on campus, or someplace else, you basically get to learn things in a more fun way, you get 2 credits for 3 weeks of classes, and you gain 10-20 new friends! Also, on campus MayX are already included in your tuition, so you’d only have to pay for housing to do one!
  3. If you can, take intro classes up until your Junior year. With some departments this might be much harder to do, but one of my best decisions was taking intro to Philosophy Junior spring, and now it has become the major I will not graduate with but I enjoy the most. This semester I had 2 chemistry classes left to count towards my major, so I filled the rest of my schedule with a philosophy class, and a half-philosophy based class.
  4. If you come here knowing what you want to major in, sit down with your advisor early on in your semester and make a game plan for your classes spread out in the 8 semesters. This is how you can plan ahead for a potential semester abroad, declaring a second major, taking a semester off for working a full-time internship, or graduating early!
  5. If you come knowing you like a bunch of things, look up the class requirements for each major you’re interested in and make sure you have enough time to decide before you declare. For example, chemistry requires 13 chemistry classes, 3 math, and 2 physics classes. Some other majors might only require 7 classes from their department and maybe 1 more class. You could wait to declare your major in the second case, but you don’t have that luxury in the case of Chemistry (and of course some other majors that I’m too lazy to look up).
  6. Take most of your GER’s (General Education Requirements) in the first 2 years here. Stressing out about your TA or HA credit as a second semester senior is NOT fun.
  7. Finish up your CLP credit requirements early. My freshman year I went to 20 CLPs for which I got credit, so for the past 2.5 years I only had to go to 12 more events. I’ve been to more than 12 obviously, because I personally love CLPs but I don’t always swipe my ID because I don’t need the credits anymore. But it’s kind of funny to me how some seniors still have 20 CLPs to go. Like homeboy/homegirl, when are you gonna live life?
  8. Become friends with the professors. If you talk to them on a regular basis, and show interest in their class, they are much more likely to give you that last spot in their high demand class that you NEED to graduate/you REALLY want to be a part of because you heard it’s fun. Just saying, that’s how I got into a high-demand history class last semester (shout out to Dr Day for ALWAYS being the coolest professor on this planet and for making me love history).

These are the things I did and look at me now: a spring semester senior with NO CLASS ON MONDAYS AND FRIDAYS! Yay for 4-day weekends. I’m telling you, all you need in life is the desire to plan, a good planner (I’m personally not about the online calendars), and a set of good eyebrows. Good eyebrows will take you places kiddos.

These are my 2-cents fam. Think of those as you’re planning your college career. Senior year might seem so far away, but trust me, you won’t even realize how fast the 4 best years of your life go by.

Peace out, squad.

Danai

Thankful for Furman

aagakidou / / Danai Agakidou

About a week ago, an organization called Furman Creative Collaborative published this video of Furman students saying what they’re thankful for. Make sure to watch this whole video and stay tuned until the end, when my friend Nathan showers us all with little drops of truth (if you watch it and you don’t say “UGH SAME!” once he is done, then we can’t be friends.)

PS: I am proudly the president of FCC so you bet your bottom dollar I will promote the organization through this blog post. We organize the annual TEDxFurmanU conference so we are pretty darn cool.

 

A student’s perspective on the Chemistry Department (guest blog by Hazel Davis)

aagakidou / / Danai Agakidou
Hey all!
My name is Hazel Davis and I am currently a senior Chemistry major at Furman. A lot of people think of Chemistry majors as a super obscure group of uber nerds who don’t have a lot of other friends and spend all their time studying. (Just think of all those Hollywood movies where the science majors are the scrawny little guys with erratic hair and glasses, who are constantly cooped up in a lab somewhere) To be fair, we do spend a lot of time studying, but in my time at Furman, being a chemistry major means having some of the best friends and support groups across campus. I might be biased, but I truly think we have one of the close-knits groups on campus, and that makes all the late nights of studying for bio-organic tests and writing analytical labs worth it.
My time in the department is a little different from some, because on top of being a chemistry major, I’ve also been president of the American Chemical Society Student Chapter for the past three years, and have worked in the chemistry department as a student office assistant since junior year. I’ve had the privilege of being able to organize a number of events for the whole department, which can be terrifying at times – trying to coordinate between officers and making sure that we have enough supplies and food, but it’s so great to see everyone in the department come together and enjoy a few laughs, good conversation, and maybe a couple of nerdy moments. We just had our fifth annual Pumpkin Somethin’, a cookoff between faculty and students, and last spring did our first joint Pi Day between the chemistry, math, and physics departments. And that’s not to say that ACS is the only sponsor of chemistry events, every summer the chemistry department hosts an Ironman competition, with all sorts of Olympic-style events that majors and faculty can participate in. It’s nice to know that at the end of the day, everyone can put a little time aside and come together to not worry about all the work that’s piled up.
As a senior, it’s getting to the point where I’m starting to look forward and wonder about all the things that are coming up in my future, but also take a really reflective look at all the things that have past. There are bad weeks and bad test scores, but there are also three and a half years of incredible events, time with friends, six hour bus rides to conferences with the Lego Movie, and conversations with professors that have nothing to do with electron pushing in organic chemistry, and everything to do with life.
For all of the prospective students reading this, be a chemistry major! And if you say no, you hate chemistry, just find a department that will give you all the support you need to succeed, but also challenge you to work hard, and grow as a person. Find that subject that brings you to tears because of how hard you have to try to master it, because when you finally do it’ll be worth it.
I promise.
hazel

She’s never wrong, she’s Dr Wright!

aagakidou / / Danai Agakidou

Hey dins (and hopefully future dins)! Last week I interviewed Dr Wright from the Chemistry department (which also happens to be my major, whoop whoop) so here is what we talked about- enjoy!

wright
Dr Wright, professor of Chemistry and department chair.

What is your role in the chemistry department?

I have 2 roles in the Chemistry department. One role is to teach chemistry to students by teaching courses, and the other role is to be the coordinator for the department as the department chair. In the first role, I get to teach the CHM-110 general chemistry course for potential chemistry majors, and then I teach our inorganic course, and work with research and seminar students. As chair, I help coordinate the summer research programs, try to find funding for everybody, try to coordinate the instrumentation and keep it running, organize service contracts, and try to keep everybody working happily together.

 

How would you describe the ideal chemistry major? What are good chemistry majors like?

They come in lots of flavors. I don’t think it’s a one-size-fits-all major, but I think what characterizes our majors in general is they are curious about how the world works, and they are intrigued by what happens in the laboratory whether they’re doing wet chemistry, mixing chemicals together, or sitting at a computer modeling how the universe might work. They are curious and resilient. They bounce back when their experiments don’t work, and they are able to smile occasionally when things don’t work, haha!

 

What is your favorite class offered by your department?

Techniques of chemistry. It is a wild and crazy class where the students are coming and going all day learning what it’s really like to be a scientist. From learning how to assemble glassware, to mixing chemicals, how to isolate products and characterize products they’ve made, learning how to use the instruments, getting their “driver’s license” on the NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy), using the big instruments for the first time. It wears everybody out, but at the end students are ready to not be afraid to make a mistake in lab. It’s okay to not know the answer all the time, and that’s a major transition for every student, to get to the point where they understand that it’s okay to not know the answer.

 

What kinds of study abroad opportunities are available to students? Are there any specific chemistry programs?

Chemistry majors have gone on study abroad with just about every department there is on campus. They have traveled with all the language programs, with the biologist to the Galapagos, they’ve gone to Africa on safari, they’ve gone to China, Japan, England doing Shakespeare. If there’s a study away program offered by the university, I can guarantee you there’s been a chemistry major on that trip at some point in time. We try to ensure that the chemistry major is flexible enough so that students can take advantage of the openings. We’ve had students go to the art department’s semester in Cortona, Italy. As long as you let your advisor know that you’re interested in going to a study abroad program, we work with students to make sure that it’s possible for them to do that. And we have sent students off to work in labs in Australia at the Institute for Smart Polymers. Professor Hanks has organized a lot of those opportunities at the University of Wollongong in Australia. While it’s not a formal program, we have coordinated these opportunities.

 

What are some internships that Chemistry students have held recently?

We’ve had students participate in other research programs through NSF REU programs, we have also had pre-med student participate in internships where they shadowed physicians, doing research at St. Jude’s, or even at the national Cancer institute, and we’ve had students who have done art conservation internships. So, usually, the students are combining chemistry with either an interest in health related interests, or with a second major, as it was in the case of the art preservation internship.

 

Are there any cool things we should know about the chemistry research program at Furman?

Well, Furman chemistry department has one of the largest undergraduate research programs in the nature. Last summer we had 54 undergraduate students working full time for 10 weeks with paid stipends from one funding source or another. Those students were working side-by-side with faculty members, in their research labs. Some groups were smaller, some were bigger. One student was working with Dr Knight doing matrix isolation analysis of new unstable molecules. Larger groups, like Dr Hanks’ look at new surface coating to prevent biofouling, whether it’s on implanted medical devices, or the coating of a boat. Dr Hanks just had a paper get accepted for publication about two weeks ago on some of his latest results. Dr Springsteen is part of this huge center for chemical evolution and he just had another paper get accepted last week. Dr Wagenknecht had 2 papers published this past spring and summer on his solar energy research. There’s lot of exciting stuff happening and all of these papers have student co-authors, it’s not just a faculty member grabbing the data from the student and publishing it. These students do research, collect and interpret their data, and then we send them off to conferences where they present that data. We had 32 students presenting their research at the Southeastern Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society (SERMACS) in Columbia, SC just last weekend.

Well, these are all the questions I had for you, but do you any additional comments for prospective students?

One of the things about a chemistry major is that you can do so many things with a degree in chemistry. It’s not just designed for students who want to spend the rest of their life working in a lab, or are pre-Med. While it certainly prepares people for those opportunities, we’ve had students that’ve gone directly into industry, regulatory science, doing patent law, going to divinity school and using this ability to think critically and ask questions as they work with people. No matter what you end up doing later, it’s a degree that helps you think clearly and critically.

Danai Agakidou #seniorinDINial

aagakidou / / Danai Agakidou
  1. Name: Athina Danai Agakidou
  2. Hometown: Thessaloniki, Greece
  3. Graduation Year: 2017
  4. Major: Chemistry
  5. Name one student organization you are a part of: I am a proud member of Furman Creative Collaborative (FCC) and Admission Ambassadors. I’m the president of FCC, an organization whose mission is to promote creativity and community on campus, and one of our signature events is our own TEDxFurmanU conference every spring. I am also the vice president of Admission Ambassadors, an organization that reminds me why I love Furman on a daily basis, and has given me a ton of networking opportunities with students around campus as well as prospective students.
  6. What is your favorite CLP you’ve attended and why: My favorite CLP was the first one I attended my freshman year, called “The art of pencil sharpening” by David Rees. I walked around campus the first week and saw so many flyers for this event and I thought “there is absolutely no way this guy is going to talk about sharpening pencils, this is a metaphor for something”. JOKE’S ON ME. This event was 100% instructional on how to properly sharpen your pencils, but he did it in such a hilarious way, and I laughed so much, that it quickly made the top of my list. Also, this CLP was brought in by FCC, so it was the first thing that drew me to one of my favorite things I’ve been involved with on campus. Also, all of the theater plays never fail to impress me, and I love getting CLP credit for supporting my friends while being entertained!
  7. Name 3 things in your residence hall/apartment that you couldn’t live without
    1. My American flag
    2. My ACS periodic table of elements blanket
    3. My perfume (I am obsessed with smells)
  8. What’s your favorite class you’re taking this semester? History of Western Medicine is by far my favorite class I’m taking. I only took it because my sophomore fall I had to take a history class for my GER credit, and I ended up taking History of Modern Europe with Dr Day. I hated learning history before I took this class, but Dr Day’s passion and enthusiasm just made me love the class. On top of that, I ended up being really good at it, and she told me I gave her the best answer she’s seen in my final answering an essay question about WWI. Anyways, I had a gap in my schedule and purposely ditched every other option I had in order to take Dr Day’s History of Western Medicine class. It’s been a lot of fun- I mean we are learning about leprosy and the plague, and Dr Day’s anecdotes just make it so much more interesting and enjoyable!
  9. Where can we find you on a Saturday afternoon? On an average Saturday afternoon, you’d find me cooking in my apartment. I find cooking to be extremely relaxing, and I can be creative with it so it’s like my me time.
  10. What part of campus/Greenville feels most like home to you? The Hartness Welcome center is my favorite place of this campus. I definitely feel the groups of ambassadors are my family, and the admission building is my home. Plus, there’s always coffee, hot chocolate, and cookies there, so it’s a PRETTY GREAT HOME!
  11. What are you most looking forward to this year? Applying to Chemistry graduate school and figuring out my future!
  12. Describe Furman in 5 words. Community, serenity, passion, family, dependable.
  13. What’s your favorite meal served on campus? CHICKEN TENDERS (on chicken tender Tuesday)!!!
  14. Name the last song you listened to: Take me home, country roads (I’m tryna be southern, okay?)
  15. Recommend a movie, a book, or a TV show we should all be reading/watching: Okay, confession time: I started watching the Office the last week of August because I had never watched the whole thing, and last month I finished watching it. I FINISHED WATCHING ALL 9 SEASONS OF THE OFFICE WITHIN 1.5 MONTHS. And I’m about to start watching Arrested Development for the second time. Everyone needs to watch both of these shows because
    1. They are really easy to watch
    2. They have very clever humor based on continuity
    3. Episodes are literally 20 minutes; you can watch at least one in a day while taking a break. Or you can watch multiple episodes and finish a season in a day (I will NOT admit that I’ve done this).
  16. If you were a gif, which one would you be? http://i.imgur.com/dITfJcR.gif

Remember to also follow my adventures on Instagram using #seniorinDINial!

PS: I might have dressed up as Tina from Bob’s burgers for Halloween 2016…