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Student Spotlight: Annie Faulkner

Posted by nflong

Interview with Senior Political Science & History student, Annie Faulkner conducted January 2023

Q: Tell me about your thesis project.

My thesis is on historical memorials and monuments commemorating Ukrainian history. It explores how perceptions of power and historical narratives arise from the way that history is memorialized, looking at the differences between the ways that historical events were commemorated under the Soviet Union versus Ukraine after independence.

For example, looking at Holocaust memorials has been really interesting because the Soviet Union did everything in their power to erase the experiences of the Jewish community during World War II. There are a lot of examples of places where a real Holocaust Memorial wasn’t built until Ukraine was able to become fully independent.

Especially with the war that’s happening, now they’re starting to tear down some of these Soviet era memorials. The project is looking at the politics of power and how that plays into how we remember history.

Q: What have you done for your project so far?

Right now, I’m just cracking down on research. I’m putting together a directory of as many memorials in the country as I can find. Of course, I’m not going to use all of those for the written thesis, but it’s been really helpful going from city to city and seeing the kinds of things we’re looking at, how things are. Western Ukraine is generally more pro-independence or nationalist, whereas in the east, like in the Donbas and Crimea, there’s a lot more room for Russian sympathy.

So, I’m currently in that research stage, just beginning to try to write my first draft. I’m compiling as much information as I possibly can.

This week, I’ve been doing a lot of work looking at a park in Kyiv, which was a really big site during the Holocaust. The Nazis killed about 100,000 people there. There’s a ravine at the edge of Kyiv where they shot mostly Jews, but also Roma and Ukrainian nationalists and prisoners of war, all sorts of people.

Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center in Kyiv

The first Soviet memorial was built in 1976, and it was dedicated to Soviet citizens who were killed at the site but didn’t mention that most were Jewish. In 1991, one month after Ukraine declared independence, a memorial statue of a menorah was put up.

Since then, in this kind of park in and out of this area, there have been more and more memorials popping up dedicated to different groups of people. In this small area, there are about 15 memorials pointing to different things.

It’s been really interesting, looking at this competition for who gets remembered. The politics of that have been very interesting to me.

Interestingly, the Soviet government was so set on not allowing people to remember this as a site that was important that they were trying to build a sports stadium on top of it. In the 50s and 60s, they had a brick factory dump all of its loam, all the mud byproducts, right into the ravine to fill up the pit where everyone had died. To do this, they had to build a dam, but during a rainstorm the dam broke and there was a mudslide that killed 1,000 people. So, in their efforts to make sure that nobody remembered the crimes against the Jewish community, they ended up killing another 1,000 civilians. The Soviet death count was 145, and the Ukrainian death count was about 10 times higher. If I hadn’t been looking into the memorials, I would never have known that. This one park is what I’ve been focusing on all week—it’s fascinating. It’s called the Babi Yar or the Babyn Yar, depending on the translation.

27-ft bronze statue depicting a Ukrainian and Russian worker on a plinth, holding aloft a Soviet order of friendship. Located in Kyiv before its dismantlement in 2022

Q: What conclusions have you come to so far, based on your current body of research?

A big part of it is that there’s not a singular historical truth, in a lot of ways, but at the same time, the people that are in power are the ones that control the narrative, and that’s problematic in a place that’s been colonized for 1,000 years. I think I need to do more research before I come to a more set conclusion.

Looking at a country that’s so recently gained independence, only about 30 years later, this tells us about the relationship with Ukraine and Russia coming out of the Soviet Union and how they’re able to establish themselves as a separate political and historical entity. Because of this iteration of what my thesis is, it’s just gotten narrower. Looking at broader historical themes in Ukraine over time, there’s a big question of “How did it become a separate entity in itself?” It’s never been independent until 30 years ago, it’s always been colonized by countries like Poland, Austria-Hungary, or Russia, so how does a political and cultural entity come out of a place where the language has almost been driven extinct? How does an area that’s never been given the chance to decide its own destiny exist? By what frameworks does their history become history?

Q: What do you plan to do with this research?

I’m hoping to get it published somewhere. I’m not really sure what that’s going to look like yet.

Q: What inspired you to research this topic?

Last spring, I was doing the DC Semester Program, so I was living in DC and doing an internship at the McCain Institute for International Leadership. I was working there when the war started.

For one of the programs that I was working on, we were doing an international global fellowship, so we took 26 mid-professional, middle-aged career people from 25 different countries, divided into five different regional/global region, for professional development. It was really interesting to work on it, because I was there with people like a Supreme Court Justice in Brazil and the youngest Congresswoman in Guatemala, people that are doing a lot of amazing work. But we actually had two representatives from Ukraine—one of them was a colonel in the army and the other funded the NGO “Youth for Global Progress”.

We were interviewing people the week that the war broke out. When we asked one woman to interview, we were like, “Hi, ma’am, would you be available for an interview this Thursday or Friday at these times?” And she responded, “I’m fleeing the country with my son, how’s Monday?” It was so amazing, meeting and interacting with those people.

The Institute monitors a lot of global issues like that, they already had a working group on Russian relations, so I was sitting in on a lot of those meetings with these incredible people. Through that environment, I learned so much about this issue.

It’s also at an intersection between my majors: political science and history. I wanted to combine those disciplines in a way. This is a history thesis, but at the same time it’s very political. While I was working with contemporary politics and contemporary issues at my internship, for the majority of Americans there’s really no understanding of the historical issues that have led us to this place. I wanted to look at what I was looking at from different angles, like a broader cultural development angle.

This was actually Dr. Cornell’s idea. I sent him the books I was reading, and he sent me the books he was reading and commented on interesting angles to take.

Q: How have faculty or your peers helped you out with this project?  

Dr. Cornell has been really helpful! I was originally supposed to do a poli-sci thesis, but I had to drop it, and by then my interests had changed. Dr. Cornell is my advisor for the department, so he really helped me start back from square one and figure things out. The 401 History Capstone class was also really helpful, having Dr. Scarlett to help guide me, and also Renee’s help. Renee Rogers and I were both doing Soviet history projects, and our little group was really good, it was a cute class. Renee had a lot of interesting resources. Interestingly, my capstone project and my thesis both started from the same place but ended up being wildly different projects.

Q: Would you say that helping students pursue these types of projects is something that’s really important to the history/anthro/classics department?

Absolutely. One of the things I’ve found to be really helpful in this department that I really value is that all the professors here are really passionate about research and helping students with it. Like, we had that event last semester, the speed-dating research event. Professors that I’ve never met before were really interested in what I was doing and wanted to engage with me about that. I just love the department and the professors here.

Q: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Talk to people. Talk to your classmates, talk to your professors, ask questions. You’ll find out some cool things.

 

Annie’s email is aefaulkn@butler.edu for any students interested in hearing more about her research or experiences.

Archaeology of the Dead

Posted by nflong

Interviews conducted early November 2022.

Archaeology of the Dead, taught by Dr. Lynne Kvapil, was offered for the Fall 2022 semester. It focuses on the archaeological approaches to understanding death and burial, and students explore the varieties of ways humans have responded to death and the dead over time and what we can learn about the dead and the living from funerary remains. The class meets once a week, and each week generally follows the same schedule: during the week, students are assigned readings relating to the subject of the week, then they contribute their thoughts on the readings to a “Hot Takes” discussion board before class, and in class, they discuss the readings, and lectures and group discussions build off of these ideas.

Final Project Presentations 12/08/2022 (Courtesy of Lynne Kvapil)

Dr. K said, “I teach Archaeology of the Dead, but I prefer what the class affectionately calls it—Dead People Class. I had the opportunity to teach an archaeology class, which is really awesome. I’m here as part of the Classics program, and I love it, there’s so much I love about it, but there isn’t always the opportunity for me to teach about the methods side of what I do. As an archaeologist, this is such a great opportunity.”

When choosing the topic for her archaeology class, Dr. K was inspired by one of the first things she started along with her academic job at Butler, which was an archaeological project at the site of Ionia, a prehistoric Greek cemetery with “these crazy, amazing burials.” The project focused on mortuary archaeology, so she developed the class on burials in archaeology to mirror her work with this during her time at Butler. “Since I’ve been here, I’ve had the opportunity to take students to work at Aidonia. We just finished our fieldwork, and we’re studying and thinking about how to understand the burials we excavated. It made sense to me to wrap my work processing that project and thinking about burials and the things we found with students, to think not just about prehistoric Greek burials, but more broadly about what burials are, what they do, and what they mean. The wider scholarship about how archaeologists approach mortuary situations was kind of my inspiration for what the class is about.”

“A lot of what I hope students take away from this class is the methods aspect—what we do with burials and their stuff and how we do it. I loved our class conversations about how we define burials. It seems like an obvious thing, but there aren’t archaeologically specific things you have to look for to distinguish between burials and some other kinds of archaeological context.”

“There are theoretical things we can take away from burials in terms of meaning, and sometimes that can be complicated, but I’m proud of the class because I feel like they have done a great job working through some of these really tough things, things that even some graduate students struggle with. For example, the idea of personhood as a concept is complicated, but they rolled with it. It’s fun for me to see that thinking.”

Students conducting field work in Crown Hill Cemetery (Courtesy of student Danny de la Vega)

I asked several students in the class why they chose to take this class. Multiple people noted they took the class because they love Dr. K, and expressed interest in archaeology and mortuary science, as well as death and the culture surrounding death. Everyone I interviewed was very taken with the class, remarking how much they loved it despite its challenging material. Kiara Somerville, a junior software engineering and economics major with a classics minor, said, “This quickly became my favorite class of the semester and possibly one of my favorites of college in general. The subject matter is so cool and nothing that I ever would have imagined that I would enjoy or learn about. Our class discussions are also very good and weird. I also really appreciate how passionate Dr. K is about this class, and it shines through in the creativity of our assignments, which make the multiple twenty-page readings each week at least slightly bearable.” Gansey Petroff, a senior classics and psychology major, said, “I really love this class; the vibes are immaculate. Everyone is super collaborative during discussions which makes projects and difficult readings much more fun. I’m really comfortable sharing my ideas with everyone and hearing their own.” Senior Lexi Harford, an art and design major with an emphasis in art history and an anthropology minor, remarked, “This class is definitely one of my favorite classes I’ve taken in my undergrad experience. I love that everyone in this class seems as interested in the class as I do and that we all have a bit of a morbid sense of humor that makes the conversations really meaningful, and most of the time, very entertaining.”

When I asked Dr. K what her favorite part about teaching the class is, she responded, “Reading the Hot Takes makes my day because they’re so passionate about what we read, even if it’s something we don’t like. I love it and having that preface to talking about things in class is part of why I’m so excited every Thursday—people are already coming out in full force. It’s really exciting to see what people write out, literally reading their first reactions and then sorting through those feelings in their ideas in class is super exciting and really cool and inspirational.”

When asked what their biggest takeaways from the class were, I received a variety of responses. Petroff remarked that archaeology is really difficult and that it’s destructive by nature, and Somerville answered, “That I know nothing, and that the world really needs to treat human beings with respect.” Sophomore history major Cassidy Paulk said, “My biggest takeaway from the class is that death does not have to be a scary thing. This class has given me a new perspective on death. Firstly, I now view death as another transition in a person’s life. It happens to everyone, yet many people around the world feel differently about it. I have enjoyed learning about the different ideas and practices surrounding death for different people. I think that taking this class is a great decision as it gives you so many ways to widen your perspective.”

Dr. K channeled her creativity and passion for the subject into the final project, which is a culmination of everything that has been covered over the semester. She described, “The final project comes in two parts. The first part is to design a burial and a funeral to go along with it. It’s freeform, you can make it anything you want. The second part is to fast forward in time and think about how an archaeologist would approach your burial. The goal is to think about methodology, how you’d encounter it, how you would sort out your findings, how you would create meaning out of that based on what survives, and how you would ethically approach what you do with your findings. It really incorporates the big underlying themes of the class and asks everyone to be an archaeologist for this thing that they’ve created. I think it’ll be really interesting and I’m excited to see what people come up with!”

A special visit to the class by “Boaty!” (Courtesy of student Gansey Petroff)

The creativity and thoughtfulness of the class comes through with all the unique ideas for final projects. Petroff is “planning on describing a tree pod burial, which is actually how I want to be buried. It sounds super cool because you get to pick what kind of tree you want, and it would represent you in a way. Plus, it would be really hard to excavate, so I’ll have fun with the archaeological description side of things.” Somerville said, “My first thought was a clown funeral, but then I remembered that I’m absolutely terrified of clowns, but I also keep thinking about the clown funeral from Modern Family and think that doing a funeral around some random, quirky profession would be fun. Or the burial of a diehard stan of something random, like Cats the movie because I can just imagine a group of future archaeologists staring at a grave and wondering why there are plastic cat ears and a Taylor Swift poster as grave gifts.” Paulk wanted the final project to connect to something about the differences in practices of funerary customs for people of different genders, and Harford said, “I’m thinking about doing some research on how ceramic glazes are made. I’m a studio art major but also love art history, so I’m imagining cremated remains being incorporated into a slip or glaze that is used to recreate black figure-style pottery with a scene representing the life of the deceased. I wanted to do something far outside of the box that if an anthropologist or an archaeologist found it way in the future, they’d be shocked by it!” There’s no doubt that every single final project is going to be incredibly unique, and a brilliant demonstration of the things learned in this class!

Finally, I asked Dr. K if she is planning on teaching another archaeology class in the future and what it would be on. “I hope so! I pitched a class on my specialty, the Mycenaean Greeks. I haven’t gotten a chance to focus on that because I’m working on another project on the Mycenaeans as a culture and about the archaeologists who have worked with them. It’s a little bit niche, so I don’t know if it’ll go, but I figured that since I have this project coming up, it’ll be important for me to focus on that. The idea of being able to bring students into the scholarly conversation that I’m involved in is really rewarding for me and hopefully, it would be rewarding for them too. I have a ton of ideas, so hopefully, I’ll have lots of opportunities to do something like a theory class or a straight-up methods class!” Be sure to look out for more classes taught by Dr. K in the coming semesters!

To wrap this up, in the words of Dr. K, “Classics rules!”

Alumni/Faculty Spotlight: Vic Overdorf

Posted by nflong

Interview with BU alum and current faculty member Professor Vic Overdorf conducted late September 2022

Q: When did you attend Butler and what was you major?

I graduated from Butler in May 2017, having transferred from a different college in Wisconsin. I double majored in what is now our GHS and history. I didn’t end up declaring my history major until my junior year.

Q: How did your time at Butler impact your future and where you are right now?

In so many ways. To start with, when I was at Butler, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do yet and was participating in undergraduate research. I became passionate about the topic that I ended up doing my dissertation on, and when I realized that I had such a passion for research, it became clear that it was something that I wanted to pursue as a career path. I don’t know that I would have gone to grad school unless I had participated in undergraduate research here. The fact that this department has such a strong emphasis on research was helpful to me. I think that’s only developed more recently in this department.

Q: Tell me about your dissertation.

My dissertation was on a group of gay men who were incarcerated in Alcatraz in the 1930s through the 50s. When we think about Alcatraz, we usually think of Al Capone or Machine Gun Kelly or murderers. You usually don’t think about gay men. My research looks at how these men ended up there, why nobody knew about it, and what their experiences were like. Many of them underwent psychological experiments and medical experiments. My research looked at these things and explored their treatment. That project started at Butler. I was doing a paper for a class. I was trying to find a topic, and I knew I was interested in thinking about how gender structured the prison system. I was looking through some online archives, and I came across a file for a man who was incarcerated in Alcatraz and was only charged with sodomy, which I thought was odd. I looked online and was able to see just from the list of prisoners and their crimes that there were about twenty-eight more men who were only incarcerated for sodomy. The department was able to fund me to go visit the archives to see if there was something going on, and there was, which was invaluable, especially because I wouldn’t have pursued that research unless I’d been encouraged by the department.

Q: What did your path look like after graduating from Butler?

Right after Butler, I entered the doctoral program at Indiana University Bloomington in gender studies. I’m now going into my sixth year as a doctoral candidate, likely to get my PhD within this academic year. I moved to Bloomington and loved it, but I’m glad to be back in Indy.

Q: Why did you return to teach at Butler?

After teaching at IU for a couple of years, I wanted to see what it would be like to teach a student body similar to my time at Butler. I always appreciated when I was a student here how curious all my classmates were and how, especially in those upper-level classes, people were working so hard and were interested in answering the questions they had about the materials. The smaller class sizes here were really interesting to me because at IU I was teaching mostly larger classes. That’s why I came here, for that experience. Also, the faculty members here are incredible. As I’m sure you know, the bonds you create with faculty really do last, and they help so much with developing projects. I knew that if I came here, it would be a positive and collaborative scholarly community, which is something I knew I really wanted. When I’m deciding what to do when I’m on the job market, looking for more permanent jobs, I thought this would be a good place to do it. It’s great teaching here.

Q: What’s your favorite part about working here?

Oh, I want to say Trixie [Dr. Deno’s dog], but I don’t think that’s a fair answer. My favorite part about teaching here is that when I come to class, students have questions about the reading. There’s not this one-way stream of knowledge, it’s a two-way stream. I have questions for students and students have questions for me—I learn things from my students just like they learn from me, I hope. I look forward to going to class every day because I know that people are going to be engaged with the material. I’m sure other universities are like that, but I think it’s special to Butler.

Q: Do you have any advice for students thinking about pursuing a future in research or teaching/academia?

In terms of research, I would say it’s never too early to start doing research. Research kind of sounds like a big word, sounds like you have to do things a certain way, but research can be as simple as hearing something in class that you want to know more about and doing some investigation on your own. You never know when it’s going to lead to something life-defining or life-changing. That’s kind of how I found out, so I would say to get started early. Look through the faculty page on the department website and see what different faculty members are doing. If there’s someone doing something that you’re interested in, just set up a meeting. Faculty are always super excited to talk about research and help students with research projects. I’d also say to pursue grant opportunities to go do research. Not only does it look really good on a resume, but it also allows you to do things you wouldn’t ordinarily be able to do.

To the second part of the question, going into teaching and academia, on a personal note, if you want to go into academia for teaching, it’s tough to get a job. If there’s a certain type of job you want and you know that academia will help you get there, then it’s really valuable. For teaching, as an undergrad and a grad student, it was always interesting to ask my professors what their approach to teaching is, figuring out how their lessons come together, how professors decide how they want to approach any given class, and what the decision-making process looks behind that. That’s how I developed skills valuable for teaching: Observing my professors and asking them questions like, why did you switch gears halfway through class, why did you decide to do that? I think that’s particularly valuable, especially if you want to get into teaching.

Q: Do you have anything else to add?

Something unique about Butler, I think, is that the scholarly community here is not just a faculty reality, it’s also a student reality. We’re all reading, writing, and learning. So, making time to go talk with faculty members and other students in your free time about the stuff you’re reading and the stuff you’re interested in, bouncing ideas off of each other, is a cool thing. I know that on the faculty side, we really enjoy bouncing ideas off of students and hearing what students are doing. I think that’s very excited. Sit in the main office and see who’s in there and just chat! The third floor is a magical place. There’s always something interesting going on.

I don’t think there’s anything in terms of grad school that would be helpful to say. I’m happy to talk to anybody interested in applying for grad school about what the application should look like, what grad school is like, if it’s best to take a year between or if it’s best to go right there. I’m happy to talk with people about that!

Q: Finally, I was told that you do trapeze! Tell us about that!

Bloomington, Indiana used to be a circus town, and there are what I believe to be families of the people who started those circuses who still live in Bloomington, so there have been several break-off little circus schools. When I was in Bloomington, it was just a thing people did. I got involved and tried all sorts of things, like the silks and the aerial hoop, but I just really love trapeze. It’s so fun. I’m not excellent at it, but I’m decent, and it’s just good exercise!

I’ve yet to join a place since I moved up here, so I’m looking forward to doing that. I never saw myself as a very graceful person, so getting into that was fun. It’s very meditative and a good workout.

Student Spotlight: Emma Gifford

Posted by nflong

Interview with Senior Political Science & History student, Emma Gifford conducted early September 2022

Q: What did you do this past year?

I was at Christel House International this summer, it’s a non-profit based here in Indy. They work to end the cycle of poverty for education, and they have schools here in Indianapolis, Mexico, South Africa, India, Jamaica, and they’re looking to expand further. I was on their Programs and Services team. I did some personal travel this summer to Scotland and Spain to visit a friend and did more personal travel to Costa Rica. I was in DC last semester, Rwanda the previous fall, so I’ve been all over the world in more than 180 days.

In DC, I was working for the U.S. Department of Education in the Office of Legislation and Congressional Affairs. In that role, I was working on attending congressional hearings, other meetings on the hill, doing work with the budget, writing briefs, reports, those sorts of things for my advisors. People in the office cannot attend every event, so that’s what the interns were there for. It was a really rewarding experience. My favorite part was getting to work on preparing an Education Witness for a hearing on the bomb threats against HBCUs, so that was an incredibly rewarding experience, to be a part of that piece of history. I’ll say history loosely, as it’s not over by any means.

In Rwanda, I was studying the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi for the first eight weeks, and then for the last six weeks of the program I was working for the Rwanda Men’s Resource Centre, a nonprofit that works to eliminate gender-based violence and promote gender equality for men by teaching positive masculinity. I was first connected with them back in high school. They invited me to go out there after I had done some research on them for a high school class, but I was barely 18 and couldn’t really go then. I really enjoyed going to Rwanda, the semester abroad, so I’m hoping my Fulbright application can bring me back out there.

 

Q: How did you find out about these opportunities?

 

With Rwanda, I found out about it through the School for International Training, which I found through the study abroad office here on campus. I would highly recommend them to other students for the other programs they offer because they really emphasize field experience in the classroom, so most of the programs are set up so that at least some portion is spent doing research or working in some way in the country you’re studying abroad in. They do programs all over the world and they’re not just social-justice based.

Finding the organization was a total fluke. I found them through a Google search. They were mentioned in a master’s research paper from someone in the Netherlands or something like that. I just reached out to them, a shot in the dark, and they remembered me! It was wonderful.

With the DC semester, I got the internship through Education. I found out about the opportunity through a professor who was sending out tons of internships to students.

This summer, I found out about Christel House International through a program called the Fehribach Center. It’s for students with disabilities to get connected to internships in the Indianapolis area. Students who are interested can go to SDS here on campus, because they originally introduced me to the program. I’ve gotten most of these great experiences with connections through Butler, there are a lot of great opportunities here.

Q: What skills did you already have that you were able to use, and how did this department at Butler help you prepare for these experiences?

I would say that writing and public speaking are two skills that I’m constantly working on, that I’ve gotten from my history classes and have continued honing over the last year. Advocacy is something that I’m very passionate about, which requires good writing and public speaking skills. In all of my roles in the last year, I’ve gotten to play an advocate in some way or another. Having those opportunities to expand upon these skills has been incredible, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. At no other school would I be able to have the number of experiences that I’ve had and still graduate in four years with three majors and potentially another minor.

Q: What skills did you gain from these experiences?

I can attribute most of the skills that I gained to my experiences in Rwanda. I learned so much from them and my experiences about kindness and being empathetic and compassionate towards other people. I think in today’s day and age you have to take the time to understand where people are coming from, regardless of whether or not you agree with them, which is something that’s very difficult to do. I never want to compare the genocide to everyday conflicts or anything like that, but the broad strokes of conflict resolution are still present in both. The matter of just sitting down with someone and having a conversation with them, being respectful, empathetic, and compassionate towards where they might be coming from can be very difficult to do, but it’s so worth it. It takes a while to get to the point where that becomes easy, so all the credit to people who work hard on things like that.

Q: How did your experiences help advance your plans for the future?

My biggest, again, is Rwanda. I’m applying for a Fulbright Grant that will hopefully bring me back to Rwanda to do research on teaching or re-teaching gender norms to youth there in an effort to promote gender equality.

After working for the Department of Education, I don’t think I want to work for the federal government again, nothing against them. However, it’s important to understand how the federal government works. In social justice initiatives, I’m going to have to work with governments in some capacity, so it’s important to understand how they function. That was important, and now I’m leaning more towards doing social justice work more broadly.

This past summer working for Christel House International was really rewarding. It tied together my passion for education and using that as a tool to create a better society. I’m seeing education as a platform to get kids to be their own people, to make their own decisions to work collaboratively with one another.

Q: What was your favorite part about these experiences?

I can say that my least favorite part is that it’s all over! I’d have to say that my favorite part is the people that I’ve met, I’ve met so many different people in the last year, but then also the wade range of experiences that I had. I was living in Rwanda and doing some personal travel in Tanzania and then a week later I was in our nation’s capital. I’ve had such a wide range of experiences, talking to really incredible people, and learning their stories. That’s probably what I love the most about history—hearing people’s stories and seeing how they’re all intertwined and listening to people’s life lessons.

Q: Do you have any advice for students seeking similar opportunities?

I would say, you know, read those emails! Read the emails that people send about opportunities. Talk with upperclassmen or really any student who’s had these opportunities, see if they can connect you. Networking in the social sciences is key to getting anywhere you want, to be honest. I’m on board with the TikTok audio that’s like, “What would happen if you just…called Taylor up?” you know? Just send an email. Worst comes to worst, they don’t respond, but that’s literally how I ended up in Rwanda. I was 17 and sent an email to an organization and they responded to me a week later. If I hadn’t reached out, I never would have gone to Rwanda and never would have been a Fulbright applicant. Just send an email! It takes five minutes of your time, and more often than not people are willing to talk to you for even a little bit.

 

Emma Gifford encouraged me to include her email, egifford@butler.edu, for any students interested in reaching out.