Hello everyone,

My name is Aaron Seckar and I graduated from the most beautiful place in the world, Saint Vincent College, back in 2012 with a bachelor's degree in Bioinformatics. Currently, I am an Interface Analyst at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) and am engaged to the beautiful Kimberly Yanicko. We will be coming back to Saint Vincent on the day of our wedding to be married in the Basilica, and we could not be more excited for one of the most special days of our lives to happen at the most special place in the world to us. You see, Saint Vincent means more to me than just where I went to college to get my degree; it is more than just a school that I call my alma mater and go back to visit for homecoming weekend; it was, and still is, a place that I call home.

Way before I was even born (I promise...I'll keep this part short) my mother and her whole family grew up in Latrobe. Her mother (my grandmother) worked as a switchboard operator at SVC way back in the day, my great uncle helped build Alfred Hall, and one of my father's cousins played on the SVC football team that made it to a major bowl game before football was discontinued, so my ties to the college were pretty strong before I even considered attending. None of those factors, however, really drove home the idea that I had made the right choice by applying to Saint Vincent. I will never forget the summer after graduating high school when the head coach of the cross country team called my house to talk about the track season that I had just completed (which was anything but extraordinary) and to talk about my summer training and what size jersey I'd need for the upcoming cross country season. It was at that moment that I knew the next four years of my life were going to be something special. 

And how right I was. I can honestly say that my four years at SVC were the four greatest and the four fastest years of my life. From running around campus (and the whole Latrobe/Westmoreland County area) with the cross country and track teams, to prefecting in St. Benedict and Rooney Halls, to tutoring Computer Science students through the Collaborative Learning Program (CLP), and working for Fr. Max when he was the guest master in the Archabbey, (all while keeping up with my own studies of course), it was pretty rare to find me sitting around doing nothing.

When I did have down time though, I loved watching other SVC athletes in action, playing intramurals or midnight pickup games of two hand touch football, and appreciating that my best friends all lived within walking distance of where I lived. Don't get me wrong...I'm not trying to convince you that my four years at Saint Vincent were filled with rainbows and butterflies. I experienced the anxiety of studies, the 3AM fire alarms, the relationship issues, and the overall stress that comes with being a college student. But it was the SVC community (which later became my SVC family) that made attending Saint Vincent College such a blessing. I hope that through this blog, I will be able to share some of my experiences that made me a part of the place where everybody knows your name.