Alternative Paths
At Colby, Alexandra Freyer '09 strives for balance.
For some students, four years of college is plenty. For others, taking five or more years to graduate means having an even more meaningful experience.
No, these students aren’t slackers sleeping in their parents’ basements. Known at Colby as super seniors, they leave school to gain experience, and they return with wisdom, enthusiasm, and a slew of stories to share before they enter (or re-enter) the “real” world.
Starting to tell his story about his time off, Jamie Goldring ’09 is out of breath. He has just left a lecture and he’s rushing to host a fundraising gig in the pub for the organization he launched to help people in Malawi. After a sigh, he says with a smile, “It’s a joy to be here again.”
Goldring, like many who take a leave, returned with a new perspective and enthusiasm.
At Colby, leaves of absence are uncommon. Over the last 10 years about three students per graduating class have taken off a full year (or more) without receiving credit, according to Beth Schiller, the College registrar. For three in this year’s graduating class—Goldring, Jessica Stern, and Alexandra Freyer—leaving school meant pursuing passions, gaining work experience, and seeing the world.
Stern spent some of her junior year working with a nongovernmental organization (NGO) in Nepal. “I think one of the things that became most clear to me was how privileged we are at Colby. Working made me realize the value of my education and the potential for doing good that it has,” she said.
While spending five months living with families on a study-abroad program in Kalimpong, India, Stern learned the Nepali language, trekked in the Himalayas, and fell in love with her host mother’s sweet rice pudding. At the end of the program she said goodbye to her friends and the rice paddies in her backyard and moved into an apartment in Kathmandu, Nepal, for the rest of the academic year.
Jess Stern '09 in her room in Nepal.
Turning her attention to the Forum for Women, Law & Development, Stern served as an intern at the local organization, which works to change citizenship laws to give women full legal rights. And since her time there corresponded with Nepal’s first elections, she dedicated most of her free time to voter education. Stern once thought her academic schedule and social life were time consuming, but interning six days a week plus volunteering proved far more tiring and frustrating, she said. “Although academics can be stressful,” she said, “they are not stressful in the way that working at an NGO is.”
In Nepal Stern put to use skills she learned from her philosophy major—like writing reports, organization, and time management—to help produce functional legal documents. “I wrote an article about women working in dance bars and helped organize an educational program to help cease domestic violence against women,” she said. “Working made it easier to understand that I want to do something beneficial with my degree, to take my good fortune at being able to have a Colby education and use it to help people in the world that don’t have that same opportunity.”
Working in a developing country also made Stern value the tools she has access to at Colby, she said. Stern returned ready and excited to delve into classroom life again. She says she missed the academic structure of college life most. “There is something fantastic about being able to take classes here, especially philosophy ones, for the sheer joy of mental exercise. I missed it so much while I was away.”
For Alexandra Freyer ’09, time away from the structure of college meant a new kind of discipline. Even though pneumonia initially forced Freyer to take one semester off, she recovered at home in Massachusetts and became interested in yoga, natural healing, and alternative medicine. She extended her time off from Colby to pursue that interest in yoga and to discover how she could make a difference in the world.
After recovering, Freyer traveled to a commune in Palampur, India, to teach English to about three dozen fourth graders at The Bindraban School. In her classroom, she says, there was no electricity, running water, desks, chairs, or supplies. “I brought them crayons and paper and we would do exercises by drawing vocabulary.” She spent her weekends in Dharamsala, home of the exiled Dalai Lama, and practiced yoga and meditation.
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