My ties to the community were important to me, so I was drawn to attend a school close to home. I also had a ton of great recommendations from other students. Many of my friends had attended Southeast, and my mother is also an alumna and loved her time here, so she was influential as well. During my campus visit in high school, I was really sold on the school, and I knew that it was where I was meant to spend my four years in college.

I knew I was interested in some sort of public interest advocacy but wasn’t quite sure how to pursue it or how that could translate into a career. I was considering law school among many other options. I felt double majoring in economics and political science was the best way to explore my interests while preparing myself for a graduate education. It was during my first year here at Southeast that I began to see law school as the best path for me, and a law degree as the best way to advocate on behalf of issues and change that I care about.

I’m really grateful for the institutional support I have received here as well as some class/extracurricular experiences that have prepared me for law school. The faculty at Southeast have been amazing, they’re all so down-to-earth and approachable beyond belief. They always seem thrilled to have students in their office and are really committed to building a personal relationship with their students beyond the classroom. I know almost all my professors personally, which just isn’t something you see at many other state universities, and they’ve been incredibly helpful in formulating a career trajectory beyond college. It’s really amazing to be able to form close relationships with faculty who are experts in my field.

I remember that as a freshman, I was kind of intimidated by faculty members. But even in my first year, they would contact me unprompted just to check in and offer help. They have a genuine interest in seeing students succeed and took the initiative to help out, even during my first year. I have had different professors who have offered personal tutoring sessions, who have reached out to review exam answers, and have offered to review essay drafts before submission. They really seem committed to creating a truly collaborative learning environment. Nothing ever felt impossible or out-of-reach while I was a student at Southeast. Something else that really stood out was our campus’s reaction to COVID-19. It was just a novel time for all of us, and I really appreciated how the faculty made such an effort to make the transition to online learning as seamless as possible. We didn’t even skip a beat — we just saw the circumstances around us and adapted our learning around that. To me, that perfectly exemplifies Southeast's spirit.

My primary interest lies in the realm of appellate advocacy/impact litigation, but I have a very wide range of interests right now. I want to use the court system to create wider, systemic change. My decision to go to law school (and Southeast, in many ways) was rooted largely in my ties to the local community, so issues affecting rural communities are especially interesting to me. This includes privacy rights (especially protecting vulnerable internet users from overly invasive technology companies) and voting rights, as well as holding local officials accountable for corruption and just the general goal of making the legal system and government more effective. Protecting the civil liberties (like free speech and free exercise) of rural residents is also something that is important to me. I’m also potentially interested in working as a federal prosecutor with white collar criminal cases or in pattern/practice investigations.