Pursuing law

I've been interested in law since I became captain of the debate team in high school. ILR has a lot of unique law-based classes, which fit me well because I want to go to law school. I have taken Collective Bargaining, Labor and Employment Law, and International Labor Law with Professor Lance Compa, who is one of my favorite professors! I've also taken classes on leadership, arbitration, and a great disability policy course with Thomas Golden that really opened my eyes to the challenges people with disabilities face.

Challenging myself

I loved the Labor and Employment Law course. You study cases that have had a big impact on people's lives, and you learn how to critically analyze a fact that you have to dig out of a case, like solving a puzzle or a riddle. That's what intrigues me about law. There can be solutions or loopholes in cases among a flood of details, and I get excited about discovering them.

I also took an amazing class with Professor Gold called "Liberty and Justice for All", that just blew me away. It was very hard, and he demands a lot from his students, but I left the class with a new mindset and way of looking at the world. I always thought I had a good grasp of looking at something objectively and distinguishing that from subjective analysis, but he really challenged me. He made me go back and reassess what I thought by reading different philosophers like Plato, Aristotle and John Stuart Mill. He would pose questions about very controversial topics and help you recognize all of your preconceived notions and values, and challenge you to question whether they are right and where those feelings came from.

ILR: One major, endless possibilities

I've grown so much as a student and as a person, and I always wonder who I'd be if I hadn't come here. The interactions with students and professors are unlike anything I imagined. ILR has helped me realize that I want to focus my time and energy on things that matter. Being able to redefine what matters in life has been a product of the courses, the guest speakers, the seminars, and interactions with students and faculty. This has given me such a broader sense of the world.

I think this school is amazing in that it isn't just about getting a job. It's about understanding the world as a whole, how we all interact with each other, and we all want to work toward the same goals of a better life and better world. When I leave here, I want to take the humanitarian values that I've learned and experienced with me. People at ILR care so much about improving the lives of others, whether they do so in law or business or politics. I've become interested in public policy and trying to change the education system, so I will likely end up doing something in this area throughout my life. There are so many problems in the world, but whether the issue is poverty or health care or unemployment, I think giving people a proper education will make future generations better prepared to address them.