Helen Sher ’24

Other clubs, sports, activities: 
I'm the Tyler House president, on the college's sustainability committee, an education research assistant, and a Gold Key guide! 

If another student was considering your major, what would you tell them? 
The SWG major is incredibly valuable within academia and contains theories and practices that can be applied to broad social fields. For me, it often branches into sociology, anthropology, and global studies. I love it for its breadth, but others may find it overwhelming. If you’re looking for a specific niche, I recommend adding minors and concentrations to the major!

What do you see as a potential future dream job or career? 
I can’t say I have any true corporate aspirations for my post-grad life. I do hope to continue working with small, community-oriented non-profits and organizations, as well as possibly pursuing a career in public education. My SWG major and Smith as a whole have fed an innate desire in me to transfer highly academic and theoretical knowledge to real-world scenarios. An essay on not having one specific dream job got me into Smith, I guess now I’m hoping that energy will continue to help me after college.

What’s one piece of advice you’d like to share about your time at Smith? 
I have found so many incredible advisors and mentors through leaning on the staff and faculty here. I think so highly of those people and value my relationships with them that my biggest piece of advice has to be to utilize the people who are there to help you.

Describe one moment when a professor was particularly generous (with time, advice, resources, etc.)? 
On the note of faculty resources, my professor, Cristina Valencia Mazzanti, in the education department, has been a stable source of advice, reassurance, and care for me over the past few years. I have worked in her classes, done research for her, and, especially last year, gone to her for immense amounts of academic and non-academic support. While this is not a specific moment, I would feel remiss to not mention her and the gratitude I have for the role she has played in my Smith career. 

What was your favorite class outside of your major? 
While it's technically cross-listed with SWG, the seminar I took last semester on the psychology of political activism was much more psych than anything else so I’m gonna count it. The other problem is, with three courses of study, not a lot of things are truly out of the realm of my degree. I loved this class because it gave me a chance to not only look into the psych department and what classes there feel like, but because it allowed me to think about SWG from a totally new perspective. I was given the tools to see the psychological reasons behind activist choices, all while being able to analyze them under the umbrella of a specific feminist activist. I learned new ways to think in that class that I may never have experienced had it not fulfilled a major requirement. 

Where is your favorite spot on campus? 
I love all the trails we have on and around campus! Anytime I need a peaceful walk but don’t want to go too far, I know that the river trail will give me what I need. My favorite thing to do is walk the entire length and back, taking a break in the middle to sit on the bench, have a snack, and watch the water run. 

What was something about your house that you think more people should know? 
Tyler’s mascot is Kermit the Frog and we love him dearly! We even have multiple handmade portraits of him in our living room. I can’t imagine living anywhere other than Tyler. From our strong community to our loving rule over Green Street, it’s definitely my favorite house on campus. T-Love! 

What’s one thing you wish you could tell your first-year self about your Smith experience? 
I came to Smith for the first time in the fall of 2020 after finishing a gap year. My first-year experience was Zoom screens and makeshift communities. I would love to tell that 19-year-old that restrictions will be lessened, the house community will turn into everything she wanted it to be, and that none of her four years at Smith will look in any way alike. I think that would be the right mix of reassuring and terrifying that I needed back then. 

What do you think has been the most “Smithie” thing you’ve done in life so far? 
Maybe not the peak of Smithie culture, but I certainly have had to check my acronym usage when talking to people who don’t go here. If I tell someone at my job back home that I’m a SWG major, in HPA, and had some great mac and cheese at NoGi they don’t immediately translate the Smith code I’m speaking in. We even give the first years in Tyler lists of acronyms they’ll quickly encounter—just because Smith has so many.