Hi, I’m James Rine, and I’m a senior biology major.
I started off as a pre-med BCMB major, but I soon realized that my passion was not in chemistry but biology. I changed my major to biology and my concentration to environmental studies, and have been focusing on the environmental aspects of the biology major. While I have been preparing for a job – ideally – in environmental consulting, COVID-19 brought with it the worry that I would not be able to get any job, let alone my most ideal job. That worry soon became reality as the country and the world shut down, and non-essential businesses came to a halt.
While I didn’t expect to start out my career with an essential job in a pharmaceutical corporation, I took a chance on a recruiter email sent to Dr. Sweeney from Sanofi. Within an hour I heard back from the recruiter, and within a few weeks I had filled out tax forms and been background checked and drug tested. Citing the lab experience I’d had at Scranton, as well as interpersonal experiences, I was offered a job in the formulations department just hours after being interviewed. The University of Scranton has provided me with the education and the confidence that prepared me to excel not only in the field I expected to be in, but also in the unexpected.