Student Profile: Department of Biology
Jordyn Farner ’26 can point to a specific moment when her career aspirations in medicine began. She was 7 years old, standing in a dairy barn on her family’s farm in rural Western New York, watching a calf being delivered. She took such an interest from that experience that her family had a running joke that she was the family obstetrician.
“I think ever since that moment, I always wanted to be a doctor,” she says.
A first-generation biology major, Farner grew up in Gowanda, New York—a small, rural town south of Buffalo. It’s the kind of place where most people know each other and look out for one another, she says, but because of its location, access to healthcare can be limited.
There is no hospital, and most medical services are centered around a single private primary care office and a small urgent care. For anything beyond that, residents have to travel 30 minutes or more to access emergency medical services.
Farner has seen how those gaps play out in real time, because when she’s not in the classroom or lab, she works as an EMT in Gowanda. When care is delayed, medications aren’t accessible, and help takes longer than it should, people suffer the consequences. She recounted a recent patient that Gowanda EMS transported for whom, after seizing for over 45 minutes en route to the nearest hospital, will likely never be the same again.
“It’s just sad,” she says.
During the academic year, Farner builds her skills at the Geneseo Fire Department volunteering, and working in a nursing home. She credits Geneseo’s academic rigor for preparing her for “what’s next.”
While she once intended to become a doctor, now she believes a physician’s assistant is the best fit, so she can stay close to patients while helping meet a growing need in underserved communities.
“PAs are those people who kind of can fill in the gaps,” she says. “You can prescribe, you can write a care plan for somebody and that’s what’s important to me because that’s what people in rural communities are not getting.”
Medicine, Farner believes, is something grounded in presence as much as practice.
“What you can give to people in your time and your kindness is going to mean so much more to them than the time it takes out of your day.”