So three words I would use to describe my
Lewis
& Clark experience would be fun, diverse,
and stimulating.
Adventurous, enriching, and rewarding.
There words that I would use to describe my
Lewis & Clark experience that I thought of
were fun, different, and privilege.
I'd say life changing, I'm just going to hyphenate
that, life-changing, difficult, and fun.
My favorite class in my major is probably
American Indian History and it's because the
professor was really amazing.
He cared so much about us and our learning.
I had a lot of revelations in the class about
studies of history that I had never heard
before so I thought it was really important
to know more about the country that I live
in.
I took courses with Marty Hart-Landsberg who,
for people who aren't Econ majors, he's very
out there.
His ideas challenge you a lot.
It made me question everything I knew, or
everything I believed about Economics and
the world.
Software Development was kind of the first
class within my major where I feel like I
got actual hands on experience with work that
I would do in the real world.
My favorite class outside of my major would
have to be Comparative Politics with Leah
Gilbert.
It was a class that I didn't really know what
it was going to be about but once I started
taking it, I found the material really interesting.
It really widened my view o governments around
the world and how, it just opened my mind
to how different countries work and how lucky
we are to have a stable democracy in the United
States.
Just being involved in computers was unexpected.
I came in thinking I was going to focus on
Physics and I'd be a very pencil to paper
kind of guy for the rest of my life, doing
problems.
Ive never been super interested in technology
and then one class of computer science and
I dove right into it.
My parents were surprised when they heard
I was changing into Computer Science.
I went abroad Junior year to Senegal.
It was an amazing experience, I had never
been to that part of the world before.
One of the most amazing things of that experience,
I think was going to a small village outside
of Dakar, which is the capital, and going
back there with a Dinah Dodds Grant to support
the local economy in oyster farming.
A group of us wrote a grant and the trip sort
of hosted this return to the village to support
the economy.
Freshman year I got a test back and it was
not okay, my grade.
And I came from a high school where it was
really easy to get an A, and I got this first
test score back and I was like of I'm going
to fail.
I need to drop out.
I need to transfer.
And then I went to go meet with my professor
and was like look, I did terrible.
And he was like eh, don't worry about it.
It's one test, we can do this, this, and this
and you're going to be perfectly fine.
And that moment of support as well as failure
allowed me to learn so much.
I was like it's okay to fail, it's not bad
if you fail as long as you learn and continuously
improve.
My thesis is about explaining the causes of
state failure, specifically looking at Somalia
and what factors contributed to the downfall
of that state.
My thesis class right now, has been an Aha
moment how much I've learned so it's been
really exciting to be like wow I really have
learned a lot in thee four years and I can
really apply it to this project and I really
do have the merit and credentials to do it
so that has been my main aha moment to be
be like wow I have learned a lot from this
education.
What I'm doing right now is with Dr. Binford
and Dr. Zobel-Thropp and it's working on purifying
a single peptide from the venom of Dady Long
Legs trying to find out if it has any potential
use for medicine or insecticide.
If it does do something cool like that, we
could patent it, potentially sell it to a
company.
Growing up in American you get the American
world view, but my roommate for two years,
Tawndwa who was from Swaziland, completely
broke everything i'd ever thought to be true,
and completely transformed the way I thought
about everything and I think that's something
so exciting about Lewis & Clark academically
is you get to have an American context but
you bring in all these incredibly smart and
talented students to add to that and give
you more substance for your education.
Things you can't get from a textbook, things
you can't get from studying abroad.
But that peer to peer relationship was so
unique and interesting I think and something
that makes us such an exciting campus to be
on.
My ability to succeed so well at Lewis & Clark
really has had to do with the people I've
met in my classes and learning of new ways
to think of problems, learning new ways to
solve problems, different ways of approaching
problems and it's without these perspectives
i wouldn't be able to have succeeded as well
as I have.
I think the most meaningful thing that I've
done so far is the class I'm taking now, thesis
for International Affairs just because I'm
finally learning the process of producing
knowledge instead of acquiring and then not
regurgitating it but qualifying how right
or how wrong it is.
Instead we are in the process of trying to
make a piece of work, trying to be the the
people now creating knowledge.
It's as though in these years we have all
come together and we're worthy enough to make
actual knowledge that can be passed on to
the rest of the world.
