- Ah, compass!
I received this as a gift
from the Center for Human
Rights when I graduated.
The quote says, "Travelers,
there is no path.
Paths are made by walking."
I'm Sophia Helfand. I'm
from Riverside, California.
I majored in political science
and minored in Spanish.
Definitely the thing that I would say
I dedicated my most time to is Mock Trial.
I did Mock Trial all
four years at Stanford
and all four years in high school,
so it's been eight years now.
Part of the activity is almost like a play
where you dress up in a costume
and pretend to be a lawyer.
Putting on this costume
and putting on a suit
always helped me create this persona
where I was loud and
confident and assertive.
I hope to bring a lot of those skills
that I learned in Mock
Trial into my everyday life,
especially as an advocate.
The faculty/staff who had
the biggest impact on me
was definitely Professor Hakeem Jefferson.
The summer after my junior
year and before my senior year,
I worked as research assistant for him
through the Summer Research College
in the political science department.
And then he ended up being
the advisor for my thesis,
which was about immigration
policy in the United States
and the connection between
immigration enforcement
and trust in the police
among minority communities.
I am just blown away by
how much energy and thought
he always put into our interactions.
I felt so valued as a
scholar and as a person,
and my ideas were always listened to.
- [Hakeem] It is so incredible...
- [Sophia] He taught me so many things
about how to conduct research,
about the topics we
were both interested in,
but also just how to talk about
race in the United States.
- [Hakeem] You look at this woman,
and one can see your own grandmother.
- My cohort has lived through
really obvious examples
of a lot of the problems
in American society.
It can oftentimes be overwhelming,
and you can feel purposeless
trying to solve these issues,
because they're so massive.
I think that if each of us tackles them
from a unique standpoint, we
have so many diverse skillsets
that change will happen.
There are so many different
possible solutions,
and I think that if we all
kind of try a different way
to approach it, some of them will stick.
I feel so lucky to have gone to Stanford.
It has just been a place
that has nurtured me so much
in so many different ways.
It gave me the space to
explore myself personally
in terms of making a lot of
really amazing friendships,
but also, academically, it
just inspired me so much.
Just being really surrounded
by smart, talented,
and dedicated people all the time,
I'm going to miss that a lot.
