Hannah Tuttle, a senior Global Studies major, is this week’s campus celeb! From studying abroad for a whole year in London, researching in Kenya, and leading COOT trips, to lounging in Foss beanbag chairs and expressing her photography skills here at Colby, this senior is just about as well rounded as they come.
Where are you from?
I’m pretty much an even split between Cedarburg, Wisconsin and Boulder, Colorado.
What is your major?
I’m a Global Studies major with a development studies concentration and a creative writing minor. It’s quite a mouthful, and classic liberal arts!
What is your favorite dining hall?
Foss, hands down. And not just because I live in the building.
What is your preferred place to study on campus?
Well, before I went abroad, I would have said the third floor of Miller by those huge beautiful windows. Nowadays, I spent a lot of time doing thesis work in my Diamond study carrel and reading in the giant beanbag chair in the corner of my cozy Foss quad. It’s becoming harder and harder to leave the room with the weather how it is!
Who was your favorite professor or class during your four years here?
Well… Global Studies is somewhat of a hodge-podge (especially when you go abroad for the year like I did), so it’s difficult to get close to one specific professor. I had an amazing experience with Professor Ben Mathes during my one stint with math in college, and I still love seeing him around. I’m also forever indebted to my thesis advisor, Laura Seay.
What clubs/activities are you involved in on campus?
I feel like I’m such a stereotypical senior in this area… I started out doing so many things and so many have fallen by the wayside with the years. The two biggest constants are that I’m a COOT leader and have been since sophomore year, and I take pictures for the Communications department (first pictures, now just Instagram). Nowadays I also work with the Alumni Relations department after a long stint with the Jitney.
Why did you decide to become a COOT leader and what was your most rewarding experience as a leader?
I love being outdoors, that’s something that’s sort of a given coming from Colorado in most cases. I also felt so lost coming here as a freshmen from so far away. I think I can count the number of kids from Colorado I know here on one hand, and I think I only knew one from Wisconsin. This might be a little cheesy, but one of my favorite things is to see my COOT babies having dinner with their own groups of friends a few weeks after COOT. COOT is great because it gives you a set of friends early on, but seeing them start to make Colby their home is really rewarding.
As a senior, what would you say you loved the most about your Colby experience?
Truthfully, after being abroad in central London for my junior year, I’d say the location. It’s not the most usual answer, but being in the relative wilderness with scads of outdoor opportunities only a short drive away has been really important to me. I’ve also really enjoyed all the ways that (it seems to me) Colby tries to make up for our location. Like with all the live musicians that come and all the events. I’ve gone to a lot of those over the years.
You recently traveled to Kenya, tell us a little about that trip.
I’m writing a Global Studies honors thesis on development; specifically, how traditional values and social organization fit within the development discourse in Kisumu, Kenya. Traveling alone as a young, very white, very foreign American woman in Africa for the first time can be terrifying, and was definitely part of my experience. But I met with so many fascinating people and learned about so many things that had escaped me throughout my years studying development. Luckily, Colby and a grant for GS called the Hunt Fund paid for my trip. It was simultaneously one of the most stressful and one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done. And now I’m about to spend the rest of my time at Colby making sense of it all.
What do you plan to do after graduation?
The dreaded question! Oh noooooo… Honestly, Peace Corps is really the only thing I’m looking into at the moment. I really need to start thinking about I want to do soon…
Any advice for incoming freshmen?
There are so many incredible opportunities at a liberal arts college that I wish I had known about. For example, did you know that as a student you are entitled to $500 a year from the Dean of Faculty’s office to pursue research? That’s insane. And there’s money like that in all sorts of departments and all sorts of the smaller organizations within the College like the Goldfarb Center and Oak I believe. The sky is literally the limit with resources like that available for students to tap into. If I could do it again, I’d be sure to take advantage of that as much as possible.