This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Colby chapter.
This week’s campus celeb is our very own Michelle Seares! Michelle, a junior government and Jewish studies major, recently returned from her semester abroad in Tel Aviv, but she’s already back in the swing of things on campus. You may know Michelle from the Ski Team, but most recently she’s been focused on her many other pursuits, both on and off campus. At Colby, Michelle works tirelessly as a member of the Goldfarb Center for Public and Civic Engagement. When she’s not at school, Michelle is busy building up her resume with her impressive internship experience. Keep reading to learn more about Michelle!
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1) Tell us about Goldfarb. What is the organization’s mission and how are you involved? Goldfarb is a student and faculty organization where students create/organize events that they would like to see held at Colby that have to do with Civic Engagement and Public Affairs. typically this consists of a lecture or panel, but we’re trying to move away from that for next year. I started doing Goldfarb because I was in Sandy Maisel’s GO111 class as a Freshman and he was basically like “you need to join the Goldfarb Center” so I did. Basically what the Student Advisory Board (SAB) does is come up with speakers/ideas and we bring these speakers to campus through a proposal process. Last spring I brought Adam Werbach the CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi S to Colby to talk about how he’s been able to make companies such as Walmart sustainable. Currently, I’m working on bringing a slam poet to campus next fall to harp on the main reasons for marriage equality, which will be on the Maine ballot again in November., Goldfarb also does a lot with the Waterville community and the Colby Volunteer Center. most people don’t realize that Goldfarb is who sponsors CCAK. 2) How was your semester abroad in Tel Aviv? What did you study there? Why did you choose Tel Aviv? I studied Middle Eastern Studies – Foreign policy, Israeli politics, zionism, anti-Semitism and Hebrew. I had never been to Israel before and basically I absolutely loved it. My program was really big, so there were tons of people to meet and being at an Israeli university, I met a lot of Israelis who can be characterized as the most aggressive people ever. It’s like New York City times 10. Tel Aviv is also the ultimate melting pot (or I guess the new phrase is “fruit salad) because there are Americans, Russians, people from other Middle Eastern Countries, and people from all over Europe. The fact that I’m Jewish might have had something to do with the amazing time that I had there, but a lot of the activities I did were not necessarily Jewish. Shabbat (Friday-Saturday) became something that was common, not out of the ordinary, in addition to many other Jewish things that you don’t see in America. 3) What are your other pursuits off campus? Tell us about your most recent internship. AARP is one of the biggest lobbying organizations in the US. They have offices in every state. I worked in the Advocacy Campaigns department, where we created the campaigns that the lobbyists would use to advocate for a certain bill, outcome, issue etc… AARP is absolutely huge. The National Office in DC takes up an entire block. It was really cool, I got to go to tons of events on Capitol Hill and AARP often sent me as a “spy” to take notes at tons of republican leaning press conferences and talks. I also got to write a Q&A about the new Health Care legislation (this was right after it was signed essentially) that was distributed to all AARP staff in order to help them answer questions that members may have. This coming summer I am interning at AARP Colorado, which does things at a much more local level and is a much smaller office (10 people as compared to the enormous bureaucracy in DC). I’m excited to get away from the huge bureaucracy that AARP has in DC and also the fact that every intern in DC truly believes that they are the most informed person on the Hill (which is absolutely ridiculous) |
Clearly Michelle has a lot to offer to the Colby community, and will definitely be very successful after school! Good luck with all your endeavors!