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"I am a first year Masters in City Planning student in MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning. My concentration is Housing, Community and Economic Development. I first considered a planning degree during my junior year at Smith, but decided to get some work experience before committing to graduate school. Immediately after leaving Smith I spent a year as a VISTA volunteer working in a shelter for homeless women in Los Angeles. I then returned to Massachusetts and worked for a non-profit organization involved in state legislative advocacy around homelessness issues. During and after MIT I will likely focus on affordable housing and economic development issues for low-income communities. I have come to greatly appreciate my American Studies major. At times while still at Smith, I worried about not being more focused, as I may have been if I had chosen a non-interdisciplinary major. I am often grateful, however, for the broad knowledge I gained from the variety of history, government, economics, education, and other classes I took to fill my political economy concentration. I would not have had the time to take such a wide variety of classes had I been in a different major. I have drawn from this knowledge of many disciplines numerously both in my work, and especially now that I am in graduate school." |
