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Planning for the Future

We asked the graduating seniors what they plan to do after graduation: this summer, next year, the rest of their life ...

Kelsey Alford-Jones: I will spend the summer in California, relaxing and job-searching. I hope to work for an NGO here or abroad for a couple of years before attending graduate school in International Relations.

Justin Anspach: I intend to spend my future warding off inquiries regarding what I plan to do in my future… . That and travel, I think.

David Archer: I plan to travel in Europe with a friend and then return to the states to work, hopefully in publishing or as a shipping magnate, but if that falls through I might attend graduate school.

John Bacino: I am moving to Perth, Australia to begin my commission with the Royal Australian Navy as a Submarine Junior Watch Officer aboard HMAS Farncomb. Additionally, I am finishing a book on digital taxidermy techniques.

Jayn Bailey: I will be working as the new assistant director of Alumni Relations and the Pioneer Fund for Grinnell.

Cate Bardelson: I will return home to Bainbridge Island, Wash. for the summer and hopefully make enough money to do some traveling in the fall. Eventually, I'll go to grad school in Theatre.

Adrian Barnes: For the next two years, I'll be studying Mechanical Engineering at Columbia University. After that, who knows? Maybe a job at NASA. … It'd be interesting and keep me from blowing up anything too expensive.

Annie Beaman: I am road tripping for a couple weeks, visiting friends and family, and then heading to Vermont to work on an organic farm, annihilating weeds and whipping the fields into shape.

Aly Beery: This summer I will live in Grinnell and enjoy cooking, working and playing with other summer Grinnellians. Next fall I will student teach English at Newton High school as part of Grinnell's ninth semester teaching program.

Leslie Boyadjian: I'm moving to Madison this summer to probably starve and be unemployed. Then I'll be student teaching in Grinnell next fall. In January I'll begin a Grinnell corps teaching fellowship in Lesotho.

Alissa Briggs: I will be doing Teach for America for the next two years, teaching special education in St. Louis.

Ellie Cacciola: Next year, I will be working in Boston or France and living the good life.

Charles Campbell: Next fall I will be starting an M.A. in Classics at the University of Cincinnati.

Kim Carley: I will be in Chicago relaxing with my family, and then hopefully I will be doing a teaching residency program for a year, which includes a five-year contract teaching in a Chicago Public School.

John Chavez: I will live, and eventually, I will die.

Meredith J.D. Chenault: My husband, Dave, and I will spend the next year backpacking the world. Hope to see you there.

Dina Chou: I will be teaching music and math to junior high and high school students at Day Star School in Juticalpa, Honduras. Hopefully I'll also get to do a lot of traveling around Central America.

Sanchit Chokhani: I'm going to be bumming around for half the summer living off my friends. Then I work as a financial consultant for Charles River Associates in Boston for God knows how long.

Adelia Chrysler: I might spend the summer canning fish. Then I will fly off to Austria where I will teach English. If fortune smiles, then someday I will be German faculty somewhere ... and an artist.

Emily Ciccone: I will be living in Madison, Wisc. this summer with Courteney MacKuen and Ellen Gibson. In September, I'm moving to D.C. to be a research assistant at the National Institutes of Health.

David Clark: I will move to uncivilized Utah and hike, sometimes with adolescents, sometimes with myself. After Steven Tyler dies, I plan to replace him as lead singer of Aerosmith, the rock band.

Brian Clites: After a summer of rest and relaxation at home, I'm heading to the Divinity School at the University of Chicago for my M.A. … Then maybe a Ph.D., tenure and retirement.

Audrey Coffield: I plan to live with Victor Soria '03 in Houston and work; in a year, I hope to go to graduate school and earn a master's in art education.

Erin Conboy: I'm going to get married and just be happy for a while before I go back to school to learn how to make people feel better.

Rachael Copland: Come fall, I plan to be working in the entertainment industry on a cruise ship somewhere in the Caribbean, playing and singing jazz.

Lori Cooke: After graduation, I'm going to bum around the U.S. for a month then head to Vancouver, Canada to start culinary school - during which time I will also be applying to medical school/getting a life and a big friendly dog!

Brian Crabtree: I will be teaching high school students in Mississippi for the next two years.

Amy Donahue: I'm going to Seattle to become a librarian, play frisbee and eat Pacific salmon. In two years, I hope to be a frisbee player for the Seattle Riot who likes books a lot.

Becca Durkin: I'll be living and working in Chicago until December. After that, I'll be backpacking in South America until August, and then hopefully I will be off to medical school.

Sarah Evans: I will leave for Namibia in June to teach at a desert research station on a Grinnell Corps fellowship.

Daniel Follmer: I will be working as an admission counselor at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash.

Steve Ford: I'll be home in Chicago for the summer and will be starting a master's program in East Asian Studies at Yale University in the fall.

Lara Galloway: I plan to spend the summer at home working to save money, live in China for a year as a Grinnell Corp fellow and then attend medical school.

Mark Gardiner: I will spend the next year as a Grinnell Corps Fellow in Namibia. After that, I may go to graduate school to study something.

An’k Gevers: After spending the summer in South Africa (either lying on the beach or working at the local university), I will return to the U.S. to begin the Clinical Psychology program at the University of Missouri-St Louis.

Joe Geni: I plan to be a rock star on world tour within five years. If this does not come to pass, I could always become a high school teacher, a sports announcer or a failure.

Nick Gill: I will be spending the summer in Grinnell working as a camp counselor and looking for a job in Chicago for after the summer.

Rachel Graber: I'll be living in St. Paul for the summer, and then I'll be in Israel learning Hebrew. After that, I plan to go to rabbinical school.

Margo Gray: I'll be at summer camp one last time, followed by Fulbrightin' it up in Moscow for nine months. Then grad school and/or fame and/or fortune.

Austin Graves: I will be working at the National Institutes of Health for a year before entering graduate school in Neurobiology. This summer, I'm working construction, waiting tables at a Nepali restaurant and watching Minnesota Thunder games.

Brandi Green: I will find a meaningless job over the summer, then I will begin graduate school in the fall at University of Kansas for a master's in journalism.

Andrew Greenberg: I intend to spend the summer in Middlebury, Vt, beginning work on the Russian master's program. Then, to Russia! I will return one day for my cat Chloe.

Juan Gonzalez: I will work for an investment bank (FBR), starting June 15. During my short break, I plan to travel to Miami with my family.

Joseph Hansen: I will be hanging out in Toronto and the Twin Cities before going to Chile in March on a Fulbright.

Jill Harms: I'm spending the summer traveling around Europe and attempting not to die despite the efforts of my traveling companion who wants to go skydiving. I am student teaching in the fall.

Zeke Hausfather: I will hike the northern half of the Appalachian Trail this summer and spend next year doing a Fulbright in Amsterdam studying economic mechanisms in environmental policy.

Sarah Helgen: Josh Lyman and I are getting married. Afterward, we plan on moving into a cabin on a lake in Montana and opening a beef jerky factory.

Ursula Hill: Woods, rivers, youth, wilderness, camp. Service, research, justice, prison.

Akira Honja: Here is my plan: starting up a company, traveling and dancing around the world, recording my adventure literally and visually, establishing a liberal arts college in Japan and finding someone who can sponsor me.

Rachel Huebsch: This summer, I will be reading romance and philosophy novels at the beach and then taking summer school classes in nutrition in pursuit of a dietetics degree.

Chad Hull: I'm moving to St. Louis to do Teach for America and teach special education. Hopefully, I'll also meet Nelly and become the newest St. Lunatic.

Bradley Iverson-Long: This summer I'll kayak with teenagers as a camp counselor. This fall I'll yak in Greek with teenagers as a Grinnell Corps Fellow. After that, maybe I'll do more yakking at broadcasting school.

Lara Janson: I will play with babies and toddlers and other Grinnell graduates until the end of the summer, and then I will go to Ecuador to study interculturalism and gender in a graduate studies program.

Miaomiao Ji: I will stay with my host parents and get some rest. No specific plan as for now.

Nileena Job: After graduation, I plan to attend Michigan State University to earn a Ph.D in analytical chemistry and a M.S. in Forensics. This will take up the next half a decade of my life.

Sam Jones: I will work construction this summer and then in the fall its off to law school: Univerity of Iowa probably, Michigan if I get lucky.

Ash Kaluarachchi: As for summer, I plan to spend June traveling in London, France and Italy, after which I will be returning home to Sri Lanka for a month. After summer, I will be starting a job at a consultancy in Washington D.C.

Omondi Kasidhi: I plan to fish in Lake Victoria for the summer. After that, I plan to not fish in Lake Victoria. Then I'll do my Watson project in Africa.

Josh Katz: I will be in Japan on the JET Program, teaching English and learning Japanese. It will be for a year or a few. This summer, I don't have any big plans.

Kate Kearney: Over the summer, I will be climbing as often as possible, so I can impress all the climbers at Indiana University when I get there in the fall.

Katie Kiskaddon: I plan on getting married to Rashed Chowdhury on June 25th, then moving to Montreal, where I will put my French major to use and hopefully get involved in interfaith dialogue.

Stacie Kossoy: I will spend the next two years teaching elementary school in Camden, N.J. through the Teach for America Program.

Brooke Lansdale: I plan to move into one of the bathrooms in ARH. After a year, I may try out a new location. Maybe a phone booth in Younker.

Anna Larimer: I'll be attending graduate school in Bloomington, Ind.-getting into bar fights with the cutters and forming my own bluegrass band, tentatively titled "diplomatic banjos."

Erick Leggans: I will spend my summer doing research at the University of Minnesota, and then I will attend their graduate school in Chemistry in the fall.

Terrill Legueri: I'll be travelling for a bit, then desperately looking for a job to prove to my parents that all those unpaid internships over the last years have, in fact, prepared me for the real world of employment.

Annie Leung: I will be researching at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities this summer, starting my Chemistry Ph.D there in the fall, hanging out with Erick Leggans and visiting David Amagai in Grinnell.

Tin-Kyaw Lin: I will be working as an analyst at a consulting company in Boston.

Abel Lomax: I will spend the summer in language school and hopefully find fulfilling employment thereafter.

Courteney MacKuen: This summer I will be moving to Madison, Wisc. to take the MCAT. Next year, I will either be working in an AIDS Clinic in North Carolina or teaching elementary school English in Guadeloupe.

Rohan Mandelia: I'm selling out to the man, doing market research for Progressive Insurance in the rocking city of Cleveland, Ohio.

Emily Markovitz: I will either be in this country or outside of it doing something until I change my mind and move to do something else.

Kyle Marquardt: Next year I will be looking at the interaction of language and politics in three post-Soviet Turkic states with a Watson Fellowship. After that, something else will be done.

Beth Marshall: I am taking a year off and applying to medical school. I'll be living in Des Moines this summer and in Chicago beginning in September. Hopefully, I will be steadily employed.

Chad Marzen: I'll be working for the Archdiocese of Dubuque, Iowa, studying and working with Roman Catholic canon law this summer and either work for the Church or attend law school in the fall.

Johanna Marvel: I will be performing in the U.S. through December, then in London through April. After that, pastry chef?

Laura Matter: is not worried.

Kelly McCarthy: I will begin a Ph.D. program in Molecular Biology at Princeton in the fall.

Claire McDonough: I will spend the next year in Honduras teaching fifth grade at an English-immersion school. Then, I will attend graduate school in Psychology in the U.S., but I hope to continue traveling around Latin America throughout my life.

Nova McGiffert: I will be streaking across America in support of animal rights. Interested? Let's go.

Brett McMillian: I plan to get a job back home in Austin, Texas, hopefully at Austin Infosystems, a software company contracted by the Department of Defense.

Ilana Meltzer: I will spend the summer at home playing with my cats, and in the fall I will begin the Anthropology Ph.D program at Yale, specializing in China.

Sara Millhouse: I will be a superhero, possibly of the journalistic or the move-home variety.

Michael Misek: I am spending the summer playing basketball with the Summer Gerbils in Chicago. In the fall, I am going to be studying at the University of Illinois to get my MUP.

Maggie Montanaro: I'll be making money at home this summer and heading to the south of France in October to teach English for a year.

Jan Morrill: In order to apply the skills I have learned in my last semester at Grinnell College, I plan to seek out glorious adventures with my trusty sidekick, Sancho Panza, in the kingdom of Minneapolis.

Monica Mueller: I am moving home to Chicago, where I will chill out for a while and figure out what to do next.

Lisa Niedergeses: I will be hanging out in Boulder, Colo. over the summer and then (hopefully) spend next year teaching near Nantes, France. I will start med school at Iowa in the fall of 2006.

Julia Nierengarten: After spending the summer in Grinnell with my crazy friends, I'm going to Nanjing, China to teach English as a Grinnell Corps Fellow, where I expect to find lots of fun and adventure, damn it!

Molly Obsatz: I will be an intern at a tiny publishing company in Minneapolis this summer. I'll be taking children's lit. writing classes, and I'll probably sell my soul to food service to pay rent.

Claire Odom: I will be traveling around Central America for the summer and will eventually make my way to the south of France, where I will teach English for the next academic year.

Christine Oehlert: I'll be spending the summer at home with my family. After that, I'm heading off to graduate school at the department of Statistics at the University of Washington, in Seattle.

Molly Offer-Westort: I will spend summer in Grinnell, doing prarie restoration work, and will spend winter in Lesotho, in southern Africa, teaching with a Grinnell Corps program. After Grinnell Corps, I will settle down in a duplex in the suburbs of Johannesburg.

Rahul Palchaudhuri: I'll be pursuing a graduate degree in Organic Chemistry at University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, after which I plan to join a pharmaceutical company and make lots of drugs.

Sung Ju Park: I will join Teach For America for the next two years, teaching secondary mathematics in Eastern North Carolina. After the two-year commitment, who knows?

Manav Pathania: Mere days after graduating, I will move to Connecticut and, after a few weeks' "rest," will begin graduate school at Yale. I'll initially be working on the genetics of human mental retardation.

Elizabeth Pekarek: Next year I will be playing with plants and fungus at UNC Chapel Hill.

Braden Pence: Summer in Grinnell, fall/winter in Seattle, spring/summer in Guatemala, law school, work, retire, die. Maybe kids in there somewhere.

Nathaniel Phillips: I will be working as a marketing statistician at Musician's Friend in Oregon for a few years. Then I plan to attend graduate school in either Applied Statistics or Experimental Psychology.

Jessica Pierson: I plan on working as a lab technician at a not-yet-found bio lab and then going back to school within the next couple of years.

Dana Price: I am working for the Maury Povich show in New York City as a pregnancy test reader.

Molly Quinn: Next year I will attend law school at St. Louis University in St. Louis, Mo.

J.P. Ramos: I will be moving to Boston to restart my search for a job in consulting or finance. I will also continue drumming and hopefully start or join a band in my area.

Kate Reynolds: I will be going back to Seattle to work for a year in a physical therapy clinic. Hopefully, I'll apply to medical school this fall and then matriculate in 2006.

Lucinda Richard: In August, I'll move to North Carolina and be my baby nephew's nanny for a year. My sister wants him to grow up bilingual, so I'll talk to him and immerse him in Spanish.

Joshua Rosenbluh: My plan is very simple: I will spend the summer visiting friends and family across the country. In August, I will find a job in Chicago.

Adam Rothstein: I'll be NOT reading [plans], only livejournal. I will also be canceling my facebook account and starting a myspace. Friendster is just lame. Oh yeah, and I'll be going to grad school in New York.

Molly Ruth: I will relax at home until mid-June, then I will most likely move to Phoenix to live with family and work, and then move to Seattle with Cate Bardelson.

John Sampogna: Next year I will either be attending law school out east or taking a year off from school. I may even decide to become a pilot, nay, a Naval Aviator.

Nick Santiago: In June, I will begin work as the set design intern for Kalamazoo Civic Theatre in Kalamazoo, Mich. Until then, I will go home to Southern California and visit Disneyland and Las Vegas.

Saurabh Saraf: I'll be working as an associate at the Chicago office of L.E.K., an international strategy consulting firm. In plain English, this probably means that I'll serve coffee to CEOs, 12 hours a day.

Ellen Satterwhite: I intend to spend the next ___ months living at home, applying for jobs and trying not to alienate my family. Then I will go to Costa Rica.

Sara Scannell: I will spend the summer working and saving money before leaving for Martinique in the fall to teach English to young Martinique children for seven months in the lesser Antilles of the Caribbean.

Angela Schacht: I am working as a nursing assistant in Iowa City for a year and then attending medical school.

Rachel Scheckter: In July I will be moving to Providence, R.I. where I will be participating in an AmeriCorps program. I will be doing prenatal education at a health clinic and will also be trained as a doula.

Cassie Schmitz: I will shun all the theoretical aspects of computer science and become a Java programmer and do something practical with my degree!

Rebecca Schum: In July, I will begin serving as a community development volunteer in the Peace Corps in Cape Verde, Africa. After I return, I hope to attend grad school, perhaps in social work.

Adam Schwartz: I am going to get the most out of life as a dog salesman, selling dogs in Memphis, Tenn. I may earn a PhD i n philosophy while there. But you can be sure that I'll be getting the most out of life.

Joshua Shireman: For the summer, I will be in Beijing and Yinchuan, China. In the fall, I plan to pursue a master's in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Kansas.

Sonja Simonson: After spending time traveling this summer, I plan on working in the fall and applying to physics graduate school programs for the following year.

Paige Slaymaker: I will begin working in the treasurer's office the day after graduation, and then I will begin planning my wedding, which takes place this fall.

John Snyder: In the period immediately following graduation, I hope to teach English in China. If I fail that, I will be occupying the familiar surroundings of home.

James Soliah: I will be moving to Providence, R.I., where I plan to get a job and maybe learn karate or something else sweet. Then I'll probably go to law school.

Anna Solomon: I will spend the next year as a Fulbright Fellow in South Korea teaching English in a Korean high school.

Pamela Soulos: After graduation I will be moving to Providence, R.I. I can't say what I'm doing because I don't want to make my peers sick with jealousy. But it will be sick.

Benjamin Ramirez Spencer: I am returning home to Brooklyn, N.Y. and working as a Hispanic communications coordinator at Major League Soccer/Soccer United Marketing.

Eliot Spencer: I will be joining the faculty and staff of the Theatre Department as the fifth-year Design Technology Intern for the 2005-2006 academic year. After completing the internship, I intend to pursue a Master of Arts in Latin American Studies beginning in Fall 2006.

Ted Stafford: I'll be living in Austin, D.C., Kansas City or St. Louis, working, finding a job, entering a career or just wasting time before entering a master's program in Business Administration, Accounting or Sports Management. Maybe.

Elissa Staley: I will be an administrative intern at the National Council for the Traditional Arts for nine months. Then I hope to travel to Latin America and attend graduate school.

Miriam Stanton: I'll spend my summer interning at the Nevada Museum of Art, eating fresh strawberries and realizing I just graduated from college. After that, life and I will figure out our next engagement.

Lisa Stevens: I'll be hiding out in the woods on the Appalachian Trail somewhere between Georgia and Maine before, hopefully, being placed in a francophone African country teaching math with the Peace Corps.

Marie Tan Kiak Li: I will take a two-week vacation back home in Penang, Malaysia and then return to be a Grinnell Corps Fellow with MICA in Grinnell until June 2006. After that only my future knows where I'll be...

Mary Tarullo: I hope to go home to Berwyn, Ill., for a while; learn Italian from my sister Gina; and move to Italy and Spain for six months, where I will look for exciting ways to feed and house myself.

Kate Thomas: After bumming around this summer, I will run the Mathlab next fall and then off to the world of teaching (high school calculus and English).

Ann Trinh: I'll be doing consulting work in Chicago and will have disposable income. Yay! Until then I'll just live on people's goodwill.

Colin Tschida: I will write the great American novel in 100 words or less. Also, I'll work construction.

Alexander Tucker: I will spend the summer in Boston taking courses at Tufts University. Then I will be moving to Bristol, England in August ,where I will be living with my girlfriend and working in a lab.

Kristina Van Doren-Shulkin: I will carry on the Borno legend by becoming fat and unpopular.

Christopher Villa: I will be working for Progressive Insurance as a pricing analyst in Mayfield Village, Ohio. Basically, I will turn 35 after I walk off the stage on graduation day.

Justin Wallace: I will attend law school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison next fall, hoping to find a niche in some sort of international legal field.

Eric Walsh: I will be working at a management position for a landscape company in St. Paul, Minn. I will stay at my parent's house until I am economically stable.

Jen Walsh: Beginning this fall, I will work toward my Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology at the University of Michigan. I will (seriously) get paid to research sex, adolescents, alcohol and the media for five years. In the snow.

Luping Wang: This summer, I will be in China learning how to drive my new car. In the fall, I am returning to Canada to work at an investment bank.

Amber Watson: I will be at home in Chicago, chilling with friends and family, finding a job and eventually going to graduate school the following year.

Linda Wells: I'm traveling through Central America with three incredibly hot road buddies until August, when I start Green Corps. Then I'll spend a year working on environmental campaigns and learning more about organizing.

Nathan Wineinger: This summer I will be working as a counselor at Camp Courageous of Iowa. Next fall I will begin working towards my Ph.D. in Statistical Genetics at the University of Iowa.

Jonathan Wright: I will spend the summer in St. Louis in ministry to immigrant and refugee families. In August, I will start working as a junior product development chemist for L'oréal U.S.A. in the hair dye department.

Patrick Wright: I will be solving equations for money unless I find something more stimulating.

Zed Yilma: I will spend the summer in Grinnell and possibly travel before heading out to Carnegie Mellon University in August for graduate study in Math/C.S.

Renae Youngs: I'll be trying hard to not be a grownup while working and living in the Twin Cities with Jess Rochester '03.

Emily Zdyrko: I'll probably be at home in New York City for the summer, and then I'm off to Thessaloniki, Greece in September as a Grinnell Corps Fellow. I'll be tutoring, substitute teaching and RAing to high school students at a boarding school.

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