COSMONAUTiCAL•net Leslie Ann Hynes
I love to learn. Three years ago, when I started the undergraduate college application process, an interviewer at Smith College asked me "why do you want to go to college?" and I looked at her blankly. I thought this should be obvious: the access to books, professors who have seen and done it all, the chance to meet interesting people with different points-of-view but who shared a love of ... learning. I thought about it on the road to Simmons College, where I eventually matriculated, so when the next interviewer asked me the same question, I had an answer: I love to learn.
After all, isn't that why people go to college? At the time, I had no thoughts of career advancement, just about learning.
Then came the loan paperwork, and I thought I ought to major in something practical. So I decided to continue what I had started at the Center for Technoogly, Essex, where I had spent my last two years of high school learning the basics of web design/computer animaion and graphic design/digitial publishing.
After two weeks of the first required course of the graphic design track, I realized I had made a terrible mistake. This was not what I wanted to do with my life. I called my mom in tears to ask if this was giving up, if I was a failure, what I should do. My mom, being my mom, gave me the most practical, wonderful advice: drop the class, take something else.
So I went home that evening and I said to my roommate, "so, Kate, what are you taking?" and she said "that Chinese history class Liu-sensei [our Japanese professor] is teaching," so I asked her "are there seats free?" and that time the next day, I had dropped COMM210: Introduction to Graphic Design and picked up HIST207: Rise of Modern China. By the end of freshman year, thanks to a travel course in Japan that summer, I was halfway done the general requirements for an East Asian Studies degree, anyway, so I decided to go with that. (In high school, I had participated in the Governor's Insitute on Asian Cultures and loved it, so I don't know why it didn't occur to me that I should study it in college. I guess sometimes you get so wrapped up in what you (think you) should do that you lose sight of what you want to do.)
My mother, by the way, picked her major the same way when she was an undergraduate.
I'm a junior now, and now that my major crisis is over, I'm really loving it. Simmons has helped me grow as a student and as a person, but it just didn't seem right to major in East Asian Studies without ever having lived there, so this year I'm studying in at 神田外語大学 with the IES Abroad Tokyo - Society & Culture program. In Fall 2009, I was selected to blog on the IES website.
In addition to my major, I am double minoring in communications (my original major) cinema & media studies. As a first year, I was assigned Henry Jenkin's book, Convergence Culture. I loved it and I decided he had the best job ever, so I immediately emailed him to ask what I should major in to be accepted into the Comparative Media Studies program he directed. His response? I should major in "something interesting."
Well, it certainly interests me.
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Outside of class, I am involved in activities on and off campus. In Fall 2009, I interned at GoFa, an art gallery in Tokyo.
At Simmons, I've worked as an admissions ambassador, orientation leader and student facilitator, because I love Simmons and I want other young women to love it, too.
Back home in Vermont, I've worked with the Green Mountain Center for Gifted Education at their annual summer camp, the Talent Development Institute. I attended TDI for several years growing up and it was an honor to bring that experience to a new generation of campers.
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In my free time, I like to read 漫画 while baking cupcakes, drinking tea, listening to U2 and having theoretical discussions about imaginary things. I love to travel. My favorite blog Sociological Images, and I've recently started my own sociology/social justice blog, Fangirl Saves the World.
This year at Anime Boston, I had an exciting opportunity to combine my studies and my hobbies and interview Japanese composer Yuki Kajiura and musical group Kalafina for the Jrock magazine Rokkyuu. I look forward to working with Jacqui and Dan again in the future.
I collect creepy dolls and am a member of the Boston BJD Club. In addition to COSMONAUTiCAL•net, I own and maintain P!NK S0DA, a personal collective.