I went to a pretty small public high school in New York City. We had around 120 kids in our graduating class, and that meant great teachers, small class sizes, and very meaningful relationships. I wanted to keep that when I was approaching my college search.
The one story I like to tell about when I visited Grinnell is that when I was touring as an admitted student, I was supposed to take a mock class in psychology, but I got lost in our infamous Noyce science building. I must have looked really lost, because a current student came up to me and we ended up walking together to the classroom. Her class was in the exact opposite direction. I thought about that moment and how kind and approachable that student was, and I committed to Grinnell!
Here I am, arriving at the Des Moines airport for the first time!
Coming into my first year as a new college student, I thought I wanted to be a psychology major with a neuroscience concentration. But after the first semester, I wasn’t sure if I wanted that for myself. I started shopping around for my majors, and that was easy with Grinnell’s flexible requirements for graduation.
That’s when I took my Introduction to biology course, “Sexy Beasts.” The name makes everyone laugh; we studied cricket and bean beetle mating and reproductive behavior. The intro course helped me grasp fundamentals of biological research, but through our professor’s specific research specialization. It was a very fun topic.
Overall, I really liked the autonomy that we had (we designed our own research experiment and presented it at a poster session), and it convinced me to become a biology major. At first it was hard to transition into this major, because I was slightly behind (biology was stricter in major requirements), but with some hard work I was able to do it. It was really worth it!
Here are just a few of the places that I’ve been to with friends during my time at Grinnell!
My first two years at Grinnell, I volunteered for the Liberal Arts in Prison Program. The program enrolls incarcerated students in a college program equivalent to a year at Grinnell College, and I got to teach pre-calculus! It was a great fun opportunity for me.
I've always liked math and science, so being able to share those subjects with my students was a new and fun experience for me. I also learned a lot from them, too. Being able to have an open intellectual exchange with people from different experiences and backgrounds that I might not have found in a typical elite liberal arts college setting opened my eyes more.
Unrelated, but here’s a picture that I took while in the campus hammocks. You can see the Humanities and Social Studies Center (HSSC, or “The Husk”) and the Admission and Student Financial Services (ASFS) Building here.
After my second year, I took a gap year because of the pandemic. During my year off, my biology adviser, Kathy Jacobson, was a great mentor figure to me. Even though I wasn’t an enrolled student at the time, she and I met virtually together. She helped me find opportunities, consider what to apply for, and be on the lookout for other valuable experiences.
Working remotely for this internship was really cool because I didn’t think that was possible for bio research! I knew I wanted to participate in biological research and get a sense of what research in academia was. But I thought that had to be in person. For the internship, I worked with mentors, post-docs, and laboratory heads in California while studying coral in the lower Florida regions from my living room in New York! I definitely became a stronger researcher by strengthening my practical skills, scientific writing, and data collection from this experience.
Below, I'm cleaning the coral with my computer screen!
What inspired my approach to studying abroad was definitely my opportunity to do field work and build on the knowledge that I gained from my internship. My internship had given me my first taste of conservation research, and I really wanted to continue it and get my hands dirty in ways I couldn’t in my internship.
I picked South Africa and made a lot of great memories there! Below are just a few of the unforgettable experiences I had during my time there:
