Social Work senior Maya Iliff heard about the Panthers Forward student debt relief program via an e-mail that was sent to all seniors. To be eligible for the program, students must be enrolled at the Pitt main campus in good standing with the University and have received federal student loans to fund their senior year. Upon graduation, Panthers Forward recipients will receive up to $5,000 in direct federal student loan relief. Maya applied for the program in September 2020 and was accepted in October 2020. Aside from the debt relief, Maya says that the mentorship aspect of the program provides a valuable opportunity for networking and being connected to the Pitt community beyond graduation.
During her sophomore and junior year, Maya served as a resident assistant (RA) at Pitt, which proved to be a crash course in boundary-setting and self-care that she must employ for her current job. She says her work as an RA has been some of the most demanding work that she’s done, negotiating disputes among roommates at 3 am and subsequently having to get up in the morning for class and coursework. Maya is currently carrying a full course load through the pandemic plus her field placement at Children, Youth and Family (CYF) services in Allegheny County. Learning to keep boundaries in place for self-care is a key aspect of learning to manage the demands of caring for others inherent in social work.
Working at CYF, Maya has developed friendships and colleagues which sustain her as she copes with 2 very demanding areas of her life: class attendance and rigorous course work and challenging professional casework at CYF. During the pandemic, of course, Maya has had to adjust, with her peers, to mostly remote Zoom classes. Overall, she says, it has been a very challenging Fall semester.
Asked what advice she would have for incoming students, Maya suggests that incoming students who need accommodations for ADHD, depression and neurodivergence should not hesitate to contact disability resource services at the University; she says that everyone should realize that it’s OK to admit that something is inhibiting your ability to learn and function with the demands of school and work. She says that she does not know another student who does not have to work at least one job to support their attendance at Pitt. One thing the pandemic has shown is that even a huge, traditional organization like Pitt with thousands of students can, in an emergency, change and adapt at lightning speed.
Maya looks forward to graduation and she plans to enter CYF case management full-time once she earns her degree. The Panthers Forward scholarship funds will help with loan repayment and provide extra support for her due to the mentorship the program provides, although currently that too is limited to Zoom. She looks forward to reaching a more stable place in her life, being able to focus solely on the career for which she is currently training, and feeling proud that she has reached the “paying it forward” stage, and returning the favor of debt relief to those who follow her.