Howdy! I’m Amalia (she/her), and I’m a History and American Studies double major hailing from the best city in the world, Chicago! — like real Chicago, not the suburbs. As I embark on my last term at Carleton (though not really at Carleton, as I’m in Rome on OCS), I can’t help but reflect on the amazing ways TRIO has supported me here for the last four years.
At Carleton, I sit on the Board of Directors for our radio station, KRLX, and act as the TRIO-SSS Liaison for the Carleton Student Association. Both of these opportunities were made possible through TRIO. As a neurodivergent student, I struggled tremendously with sticking to a routine that would allow me to succeed both academically and socially. While I still struggle with those issues, the TRIO workshops I attended, and my TRIO advisors (I’ve had three in my time here!), have helped me exponentially with creating a plan and sticking to it. As a result, I was not only able to be a better student but also have the time to engage in the extracurricular activities that came to define my Carleton experience.
TRIO instilled me with so much confidence that even now, as I’m spending my last ten weeks as a Carleton student on a completely different continent, I’m attempting to charter a new club on campus! While I won’t see the club WITCH (Women+ Interested in Thinking Critically about History) in action, I’m excited about the academic and professional opportunities this new club will give gender minorities like me who are interested in history.
At Carleton, I’ve had wonderful professional development and academic experiences. In the summer of my freshman year, I worked as a preservation assistant at the Gould Library, learning techniques to repair and protect damaged books. In my sophomore year, I worked two on-campus jobs: peer leader at TRIO and collections assistant at the Perlman Teaching Museum. That summer, I interned at the Art Institute of Chicago in the Exhibitions department. In my junior year, I continued working at The Perlman and TRIO. However, instead of returning as a peer leader, I acted as the TRIO intern, handling more of the administrative tasks. I can’t lie; the highlight of each term was hearing people say how cute the ISP 2 coupons I designed were. In the summer following, I interned at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum. The project I worked on there inspired my (40 page!!!) history comps that I just submitted at the end of winter term.
This August, I will begin earning my master’s degree in American Material Culture at the Winterthur Museum & Gardens in collaboration with the University of Delaware. With this degree, I plan to pursue a career as a museum curator. I strongly credit TRIO for my realization that graduate school was possible for me. Attending the Graduate School Conferences with TRIO, at the Wisconsin Dells and another in Duluth, was extremely formative in my decision to apply to graduate school.