David’s Journey

I’m from a small, public urban high school in Brooklyn, New York. I knew instantly that Grinnell was my dream school when I visited as a middle schooler! In the information session that Patty Amador-Lacson (she's still here and was my boss in the admission office!) gave, she emphasized location and community at Grinnell, and I could see the vibrant community on campus, as well. Everyone welcomed me here and was super friendly, and it was very chill.

It felt safe for me to be here, and I knew this was where I was meant to be. So, when I got matched to Grinnell with the QuestBridge Match program, it was such a huge relief to get accepted to my dream school!

Here's some more of "Sky-owa" Iowa!

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Pre-Orientation

Before school started, I did a pre-orientation program called Grinnell Science Project (GSP). I absolutely loved GSP, and I am still best friends with some of my fellow program participants to this day! I remember one day, we did our science presentations downstairs in Haines, which is a dorm building on South Campus. We ate ramen, laughed, and just had a very fun time.
 

In one of the sessions we did during the pre-orientation, we demonstrated a psychological phenomenon with Skittles to learn how color can affect your perception of taste. I was blindfolded and could not taste any difference between a yellow skittle and a green skittle! It was a really cool and fun hands-on way to learn more about psychology.

GSP definitely made me feel comfortable being in the STEM division and navigating our vast Noyce Science Building. (This is also the building where every Friday, students battle each other with Nerf guns, called Nerf @ Noyce!).

Friends and Community

I've made so many lifelong friends during my time here at Grinnell. Some of them I met at GSP, some of them from my major, some from a season of track and field, and some from Grinnell's Queer People of Color (QPOC) student organization.

Here I am with some of my friends!

There are always cool people to meet in Grinnell and so many things to get involved with!

Major

In my psychology classes, I had lots of opportunities to engage in lab work. Even though I hadn’t done a Mentored Advanced Project (MAP), I wrote papers and researched things that interested me.

One research project that I did in my “Brain and Behavior” class was on how giving mind-altering substances to monkeys can treat depression, and it had some surprising and interesting results and impacts. I also worked with rats in “Abnormal Psychology.” It was fun to handle rats and design experiments.

Thinking about experimental ways to treat neurological disorders is fascinating, and it is something that I want to study more in grad school. I want to do more clinical research, as well. It would be really cool to talk with people and come up with interventions for social problems!

Internships

I had such a great experience with the admission office as a prospective student, so I wanted to give back to the community as a current student. So in my third year, I worked for the admission office as a multicultural recruitment intern. 

This had been my dream job for a while. I learned of the position from a 2020 graduate who had been the intern, and she was the same person who had emailed me personally about Grinnell and her positive experiences a few years earlier. I remembered how her outreach had made me feel welcomed, and in my first year we even coincidentally lived in the same building!

Here's a selfie I took in the admission office!

When I became a multicultural recruitment intern myself, I loved that I could offer prospective students the same kind of welcoming outreach I had received. I loved connecting with prospective students over email. And when they visited over the summer, I loved seeing their eyes light up about Grinnell and connecting with them on a personal level through an admission interview.

There are so many things to say about Grinnell, and I love talking to other people about Grinnell and seeing their eyes light up! Grinnell is constantly improving and developing for its students — and it shows. I'm always excited to share those developments with students, since the community and the care that people have for this place is what makes it stand out.

Study Abroad: Japan!

I’ve always wanted to go to another country and take classes, so I had been planning to go to London or Japan since the first day I stepped onto campus.

I decided on Japan! I have watched anime since I was small, and there were always certain traditions and cultures shown in anime that I wanted to experience and see with my own eyes. It was my first time stepping outside the United States, and I took "Japanese 101," "Conversational Japanese," and "Japanese 102" at Grinnell to prepare. Overall, I would say I was able to catch up to the rest of the speakers during my time there!