What Students Really Say About Farmington


Did you come to Farmington as a Women’s and Gender Studies major?
No, I didn’t. I was going to be a Creative Writing major but I didn’t declare my Women’s and Gender Studies major until last year. I found out about the major when I took an Intro to Women’s Studies class. It was always in the back of my head.

What do you like about Women’s and Gender Studies?
I like that it allows me to pursue a wide range of interests. I can take classes in several different academic areas and they count toward my Women’s and Gender Studies major — anthropology, English, history, sociology, you name it.

How does the Women’s and Gender Studies program tie them together?
Well, they all carry a theme of “women,” so I’m taking Women in Literature; Women in American History; Social Problems and Social Change, which is really interesting. You get to see the same topic from four different perspectives, which is really nice. We’re talking about race and ethnicity in my Social Problems class and we’re talking about class status and poverty in my English class. We learning about who is poor and why they are poor – the conditions that cause it. It has been very interesting.

Do you find you like one area more than another?
No. Actually, I find them all interesting. I like to figure out how people work, so to have all those perspectives is nice.

What is a strength of the UMF Women’s and Gender Studies program?
Definitely, the diversity in what you can take and that you have so many options — it’s not just a string of 24 set classes and you get your diploma. They cross-list the courses in the program, so you get a diversity of classes.

What do you plan to do after you graduate?
My mother won’t be happy until I have my master’s degree, so that’ll be in there eventually [laughs].

Will you look toward earning a Master in Women’s and Gender Studies?
I’m not sure. I’d like to do some non-profit work, running or helping run something in some area. I’ve been helping with the “Maine Won’t Discriminate” political campaign and if I could do that for a living it’d be fun.

Do you volunteer anywhere else?
I did a lot in high school. This is the first chance I have had here to do something like that. As much as UMF is a liberal college, it’s not a one-sided, vocal college. There are people advocating from all different perspectives, whether they’re gay or not, die-hard Christians or not. There are even different clubs on campus; it isn’t just one group of people, it’s four or five who all have this common interest. The Maine Won’t Discriminate campaign is the first time I’ve seen this college come together around an issue. Maybe that’s because it’s an issue that’ll affect the outside populous, not just the two square miles of this campus. I think that’s really great. If I could translate that into a career it would be great.

Have your classes helped prepare you for this kind of social volunteerism?
I’d say so. The classes I’ve been taking you get to see where social issues started from. For instance, in my Social Problems class, we’ve examined different social movements — who started them, where they started, and why. It’s rather convenient because you can pull from this historical perspective and see what didn’t work for them so we maybe should try a different tactic, or this did work for them so maybe we could give that method a shot. That kind of background allows you to learn from others’ successes and failures, so you can use it.

My other sense is being a Women’s Studies major and taking all these different classes and having that diversity is that you can see bits of lives you haven’t been a part of or haven’t seen. It’s learning in general so you’re going to take things from it that you wouldn’t if you just went straight form high school to a job. You have that four extra years of expanding what you know. And that’s going to work for you later on. The classes I’ve taken here at Farmington have taught me things I didn’t know before.

Have you had any particular classes that stand out?
My Geology field trips with Doug Reusch [Assistant Professor of Geology] were pretty fun. We did things like plot different topography of the Sandy River or found sea shells in hills of clay — it was fun tromping through the woods. I was excited to do it and I made some good friends from that class. Part of it was having the relaxed environment where we were still working on research but in a way where we could share our experiences with each other, not sitting in a chair in a classroom to do it.

What about UMF in general do you like?
Originally, I thought I’d hate how small it was. But now I like the fact that it’s small. It’s nice not to be passing faceless shapeless people in the hall. Even though you may not know them, you recognize them — you know who they are — which is kind of nice. You get to know them by what they’ve been doing and the classes you’ve had together. It makes things more comfortable.

What has been your best Farmington experience so far?
The rally we had for the Maine Won’t Discriminate campaign was a good moment to see everyone so pumped up and positive about things instead of letting the negativity of things weigh you down.

Are you being prepared well?
Yes. I’ve been teaching myself how to be really concise when I write, which I never had to do in high school. The papers in high school just got longer and longer. Here, I’ve learned how to write in a lot tighter, which is very handy if you have to write abstracts or if I were to write a concise proposal for a grant — not just fifteen pages of “please give us money.” [laughs]