Alex Murry

Major: American Studies and English, concentration in Creative Writing

Senior Alex Murry recently pulled off SHOUT! (Speaking, Hearing, Opening Up Together!) week as chair of the PCB (Pugh Community Board). Read on about how she’s managed to combine her love of writing with her interests in social justice and multiculturalism.

Where are you from?

I’m from New York City, but my family is from the Philippines.

Tell me about your unique high school experience—how did you manage to get an associate’s degree at 17?

I went to the Bard High School Early College, which is an education reform program started by the New York Department of Education and Bard College. Each semester of the first two years at BHSEC was the equivalent to one full year in a regular high school track. The last two years are all undergraduate work, and we took college courses with Bard professors that counted towards an Associates Degree that we received at the end of the four years.

So after this experience, what made you choose to come to a four-year liberal arts college like Colby instead of just finishing a Bachelor’s degree in two years?

Well, I wasn’t sure of what I wanted to do yet and I didn’t really have a specific academic focus. I was 17 with an AA degree, and I couldn’t imagine entering the professional world at 19. BHSEC was the first time I really realized how wonderful school was, and that education and learning don’t have to be defined by a regulated standard. After graduation, I wanted to build on that trajectory by expanding my studies into a more formalized undergrad experience.

What got you interested in pursuing English as a major?

I was always involved in the arts—I grew up drawing, painting, and writing. As a child I read a lot, and my high school happened to be extremely writing-intensive—we even wrote in math, doing process pieces on things like the difference between quantitative and qualitative thinking, or conceptualizing basic theories. My professors really emphasized evaluation through verbalization, and throughout my life I’ve been lucky to have teachers who really encouraged me to pursue literature, both through critique and production.

What about American Studies?

For me, taking Intro to American Studies was a total fluke. I needed a fourth class and an upperclassman suggested I take it to fill a requirement. I had no real idea of what it was or what I was in for. Those first few weeks of class were the angriest and most frustrated I had ever felt in my life. I would leave class crying and enraged. But at the same time, that was a moment of very real energy. I had never felt so much emotion about a single course, and I realized that this is exactly what I want to do—I want to be energized, awake, present, and committed to what I learn. American Studies gave me all that and more. It gave me a language to talk about everything I’ve ever wanted to say but couldn’t articulate. It lead me to my work on the Pugh Community Board (PCB), and it allowed me to be flexible and design my four-year curriculum so that I could work in a number of disciplines to create a more holistic understanding of industry and institution. I’ll stop rambling now, but I feel truly blessed to have stumbled on that introductory course freshman year. It has changed my life!

What’s your involvement been in PCB?

PCB is a student-run programming organization whose work is primarily concerned with themes of identity, multiculturalism, and diversity. We run over 35 events annually including lectures, performances, exhibits, workshops, discussion groups, film screenings, and shows. We just finished our capstone program of the year, which was our annual SHOUT! Week. This year’s SHOUT! featured the phenomenal Gloria Steinem as our keynote speaker, a queer spoken word duo, screenings of two amazing independent documentaries, and an Endnote lecture by a historical Colby activist, Mr. Charles Terrell’70.

I’ve been on PCB since the spring of my first year at Colby. Prior to applying, I was really unhappy with Colby’s culture. I found it discriminatory and exclusive. But then I started going to more events, and encountered all these people I really connected with. I loved how these programs were bringing people together, and I wanted to be a part of that. PCB was so important to my time at Colby because on it I found wonderful, smart mentors who taught me not to underestimate our community and the way people have the potential to change and develop.

PCB has without a doubt been the most transformative experience for me here. It’s a lot more than event programming—it’s an almost curatorial process, learning how to create a calendar and work with a campus to meet this never-ending goal of growth and constructive conversation. You get to meet the most brilliant people and work with some of the most inspiring students on campus. My junior year I was elected to the Executive Board, and this year I lead the board as Chair. I can talk about PCB forever and ever, but really, it is so worth the constant stress and time commitment, because it has shown me that any problem can be addressed, and no situation has to be permanent.

How have you been able to combine your interests?

Mostly through my writing. Last Jan Plan I sort of fused American Studies and Creative Writing into an independent study. The focus was researching expatriate writing in the early 19th and 20th centuries and the migration of American artists of color to France and Western Europe. I did my research in Paris for the month, and a big part of it was also doing my own “expatriate” writing and understanding that process.

My thesis is kind of similar. I’m writing the first draft of a manuscript of eight connected short stories. It’s structured around a building in New York and focuses on the ideas of place and displacement, the notion of belonging and location. The characters are all neighbors, so you’ve got this theme of people who are close and distant at the same time, living in intimate vicinity but actually being emotionally distant. A lot of my writing is about these ideas of place, which I think is something I also focus on in American Studies.

What are your future plans?

PCB and American Studies have complicated my life plans! I still want to be a writer, but right now I’m looking towards doing something more with leadership, community building, and organizing. I’m not sure about politics or policy, but I know that I want to continue to be involved in social justice. Being Chair of PCB has been an incredible experience, and it taught me how to access my faculties as a leader. As for writing, I am always working on something, but I’m not ready to commit to a graduate program just yet, because at 21 I honestly don’t think I’ve found exactly what it is that I want to write about. I believe you have to learn through experience, try new things, and take time to understand other peoples’ perspectives before you attempt your own big project. Right now, that’s really my focus—getting to that place where I can be the writer that I want to be.