I've been really excited to graduate for a long time. I don't think I could have anticipated how much this would mean to me. I was overly cynical about my time here. I'm just blessed being here and working with communities I really care about. This is a real celebration of relationships this past year and maybe years beyond that.
I was originally a teaching licensure student at Mount Holyoke College. That's how I set up the relationships with this school. When I stopped going to Mount Holyoke, I keep seeing these kids [featured on the T.V.s]. This year, I did not want to do that.
I found it's good to have this space. I've been thinking about this project for a long time. At first nobody wanted to listen and now everyone is listening. This space is dedicated to fine arts students who are mostly white. I think it's meaningful to use this space to celebrate black and brown joy and it's important for this project. It was really intimidating at first to have all of this space to have to fill because I'm not an art student. My concentration is education in black experience. The Art Gallery is a really central space and it's really important for people to see my project. So that's why I chose this space. I thought about EDH's Blackbox, the Critique Room in the Arts Barn, and the The Roos-Rohde House. I started my project last semester which was planing and researching. This Spring was the physical work, putting the stuff that's in here together.
I'm from Brooklyn, New York. I'm a transfer student. I transferred from Ithaca College. Before all of this I went to a sleep-away camp every summer for ten years. I met my very best friends there and all five of them go to Hampshire College. I heard about Hampshire through them and we decided it would be a good fit for us, but I'm a year older than all of them. Ithaca wasn't a great fit for me. I always wanted to do something that was interdisciplinary. I'll probably miss my friends the most after Hampshire. Underneath all of this is a celebration of my friends making this happen and I'm moved by that the most.
I'm going to be teaching elementary school in Miami after Hampshire. I'll be doing that for the next two years through Teach for America. I'll start training this summer in June and in September I'll be teaching. I'm nervous and really, really excited to be working. I have family in Florida, so that makes me feel less nervous. I'm going to miss my family here. That makes me sad. My paternal grandparents live an hour outside of Miami. I have family an hour away in Connecticut outside of Middleton. It's really nice to have them close. I'm lucky to still have grandparents.
I've really enjoyed my relationships with professors in academics. I've learned so much more here than anywhere else. Making you to think about intersections of life and who you are is what I think makes you a smarter person. It's also hard to be here coming from a city. I don't drive. It's isolating to not be able to go where you want to go.
I would tell students coming to Hampshire College to keep track of things that really mean something to them and just figure out what it really means to share that with other people.