Before visiting Grinnell, I wanted to attend a big school in a big city. I did an overnight stay in Grinnell during my senior year of high school, and I became enamored by the diversity, authenticity, and openness of the students I interacted with. I wanted to surround myself with those people for the next four years of my life. Those interactions continued throughout my four years here and developed into friendships and relationships that I will continue to value after graduation.
After an overwhelming and exciting week at New Student Orientation, I found my sense of community in a first-year-only dorm, Norris. I enjoyed growing with and relating to students who were also going through the experience of being away from home and in a new place for the first time. We enjoyed eating together in the dining hall, taking study breaks to learn new dance routines in the Noyce Science Center, and attending themed Harris parties on the weekends. I was so happy to find a strong sense of belonging and community.
My second semester, a friend and I joined a student group that volunteers at the local animal shelter. I enjoyed feeling like I was contributing to the community all while playing with some of the cutest cats and dogs I’d ever seen. The following semester, my friend and I co-led the organization and brought new faces into the mix, human and otherwise.
Service, Research, and Advocacy
Rosenfield Program
Grinnell doesn’t have an international relations major, so I took advantage of the option to create an “independent major” and constructed my own curriculum. I also got involved with our Rosenfield Program in public affairs, international relations, and human rights as a student assistant. I worked closely with program faculty to support programming, talk to speakers, and engage with my peers and greater Grinnell community members. During the fall break of my second year, I travelled around Iowa to explore the Iowa caucus economy with the program. We met with campaign leaders, media specialists, business owners, and newspaper editors, all while getting to know Des Moines, Iowa City, and Cedar Rapids. Now, I serve on the advisory committee for the Rosenfield Program alongside faculty and peers!
Legal Internship and Externship
Attending law school has long been a goal of mine, and Grinnell has helped me explore that career path. My second year, I participated in a virtual externship (essentially an extended job shadow) with a mediator from JAMS in New York City. It was fascinating to sit in on complex commercial litigations and mediations, and the experience confirmed my interest in law and conflict resolution. I am still in touch with my host today, who has provided me with fantastic law school and job advice!
This past summer, I found an internship as a legal assistant in an immigration clinic in Tucson, AZ. I arrived in Tucson in the sweltering, dry heat and realized the city felt more foreign than Copenhagen, where I had been the semester before. I quickly got used to the weather and the quirks of the city and enjoyed my time living with a political defender. She had cats and chickens, which I got to help take care of. During my internship, I quickly learned the ins and outs of immigration law, improved my Spanish, and helped the office of just a few volunteers serve hundreds of unrepresented immigrants.
I elected to study abroad in Copenhagen, Denmark during spring semester of my third year. Unfortunately, the borders closed to students from the U.S. right before I left, and I took classes from home until late April, when the border reopened. Even from home, I grew to love Danish culture as well as the new teaching style and content in my classes. My core course was Terrorism and Counterrorism, in which my professor facilitated simulations of crisis events.
After arriving in Copenhagen, I immediately fell in love with the city and found a fantastic groups of friends with whom I explored Danish food and cities, went swimming in the harbor, and met Danish students. I was heartbroken about leaving, so I elected to stay for a three-week summer session. I took a class on urban planning which involved daily bike rides around the city. After classes finished, I traveled to Berlin and Amsterdam with friends from the program.
Six weeks abroad was not enough for me, so the first semester of my fourth year, I set off to Kyiv, Ukraine. I had taken Russian classes at Grinnell, studied the Soviet period in my classes, and really wanted to apply and improve my knowledge of the region. Kyiv was a much more challenging experience than Copenhagen, and I had to work hard everyday to communicate and acclimate to a new life style.
I lived with a young family in a small apartment that was a 30-minute metro ride from the city center, where I took my classes. I grew to enjoy the jolting metro cars and being shoulder to shoulder with strangers speaking Russian and Ukrainian. My program’s focus was on identity and conflict in the post-Soviet space and included travel to Armenia, Moldova, and Georgia. I returned home as border tensions were rising with Russia and am now heartbroken by the war being waged against the innocent, independent, and beautiful country.
My second year, I got to experience caucus season in Iowa and was able to meet most of the democratic candidates for the presidency. Joe Biden held a town hall on campus, and Grinnell was in one of the first districts reporting caucus results.
The summer of my second year, I stayed in Grinnell to work on a research project on pacifism in the early modern period with one of my advisors. I lived off-campus with some good friends and truly found a love for the greater Grinnell area and community. I bought fresh produce at the farmers market, , watched countless sunsets, and explored the Krumm Nature Preserve, Rock Creek State Park, and Conard Environmental Research Area (Grinnell College’s outdoor research area). I discovered that Iowa summers are truly magical, and offer the perfect weather for slip n’ slides.
