Hometown: Birmingham, AL
High School: Mountain Brook High School
Major: Political Science and Religion Joint Major

Activities: Juntos (immigrant outreach), Canoe and Hiking Guide with Mountain Club, “Polar Bear Papa,” Community Judicial Board, Sous-chef at Dolci (student run restaurant)

Study Abroad: Oxford, England (Fall 2010-Summer 2011)

Why did I want to be a Senior Fellow?

Working as a tour guide during my freshman and sophomore years was essentially a weekly affirmation of what I loved about Middlebury. On a slightly less affected level, I get a kick out of meeting strangers, especially when they are in the midst of figuring what they want to do with the next few years of their life. I always loved the board game Life; I suspect this is just one way of playing on a grander scale.

What was my college search like?

I am the youngest of three boys, meaning by the time I began to seriously consider colleges, I considered myself a pretty savvy veteran. I knew all about mind-numbing info sessions and had a considerable catalogue of library cafes to compare. At my high school, over half the senior class generally goes to the same school, 80-90% stays in state. None of which is a bad thing. In my case, it was a benefit because virtually everyone knew where they wanted to go, making college chatter and stress unheard of outside of a few kids. I knew I wanted a liberal arts experience, both because I buy into the “we’ll make you a better thinker” idea and because I had no idea what I wanted to do. I knew I wouldn’t thrive in a city, knew I wanted language opportunities and a global perspective, and from there, my list narrowed fairly quickly. I visited Middlebury in late January to see if my southern blood could handle the cold and took a tour in a delightful mix of freezing rain and hail. I still loved it. After that, the decision was easy.

Why Middlebury?

I have always wished I had a more romantic answer to this question. Meeting other freshmen, everyone else seemed to have had a glorious epiphany. They were wandering through rows of berries, they were in the middle of the field, and there it was, Middlebury! My path to Middlebury was cold, unattractive logic. I eventually figured out what I wanted (small classes, not urban, environmental and international focus, nice people) and Middlebury fit the bill. Not terribly exciting, so occasionally, I steal the berries story.

What is life at Middlebury like?

Choosing a major

I came into Middlebury with a vague predilection toward history and environmental science. I enjoyed the courses in high school, and better yet, had been convinced by my teachers that I was mildly capable. The first political science course I took seemed to combine everything I loved about history with the added benefit of sounding like you knew what was going on in the world. Religion had always been an interest, so I took a course on the Bible and American Literature the following semester, thinking I would dip my toes into the topic with a great professor. I loved the course, found myself paying less and less attention to the literature aspect, and found a class on the Separation of Church and State during the fall of sophomore year. My major is an attempt to extend that class as long as possible. Majoring in politics and religion earns me a peculiar look or two, but it offers me a chance to work with two strong departments and lead myself down two, often contradictory paths. It pushes me, in other words, something I eventually realized was more important than being mildly capable.

The biggest challenge in transitioning to college

By November of freshmen year, I was fairly convinced I was going to freeze to death, but a puffy jacket and a pair of mittens took care of that. The tougher transition was in my relationship with professors. I came from a school where not responding with a ma’am or sir was grounds for detention. At Middlebury, both were considered snarky. It took me some time to become comfortable going into a professor’s office just to chat.

Fondest memory of Middlebury

My fondest memory of Middlebury involves watching TV. My freshmen seminar had hiked down to the house of our commons head to watch a movie one evening. After ejecting the DVD, a re-run of Jeopardy came on. It was fairly late, but the commons head “loved, loved, loved” Jeopardy, and rattled off a few answers as nonchalantly as possible. I don’t consider myself a competitive man, but I have watched my fair share of Jeopardy, and do consider myself well versed in meaningless knowledge. We were neck-and-neck for the rest of the episode. I left a little later, quite smug, but also amazed that the whole affair occurred with the head of the Geography Department.

Favorite class or professor

Separation of Church and State, a religion course taught by James Davis, took everything I wanted intellectually and crammed it into a bi-weekly seminar. The subject matter was a combination of the utterly esoteric and undeniably human. The other students in the course were passionate yet reasonable, firm in their convictions yet as enthused by a strong argument for the other side as one for their own. Best of all, Professor Davis began every meeting with a sheepish grin he had trouble wiping off for the next hour. It wasn’t hard to see he was thinking, “Oh my, this is going to be good.”

What I do in my spare time

I fill my spare time like an old man. After class and extracurriculars, I am perfectly content to sit around in the lounges and read the newspaper. On weekends, if I have a reasonable chunk of time, I’m likely to join some friends to go for a hike or mountain biking. Quite honestly, though, I’m more than content to sit with a good magazine in my hand and gripe about the weather.

What I did this past summer

I worked with a legal center in Montgomery, Alabama called Alabama Appleseed. Interning with the immigration policy fellow, I helped develop the “Welcoming Alabama” campaign promoting economic and social integration for new immigrants and did some translation work on interviews investigating labor abuse in the Alabama poultry industry. That sounds as if it were ripped straight from the resume; I apologize, it is difficult not to sound pompous writing about it. Beyond that, I spent an inordinate amount of time at a local community center, boosting my ego by lifting weights and swimming alongside a clientele whose average age is well over seventy years.