Senior spring to social security. On the hill to over the hill. Graduation to... grandchildren? Here's what seniors have to say before all is said and done.
Way before Charlotte Lenz was a senior with fewer than 100 days remaining until her college graduation, her mother gave her a series of significant gifts: her old molecular modeling kit, a kid’s encyclopedia of science and a little toy microscope.
“My interest in science came from her interest in science,” Lenz said.
That interest has led Lenz to the brink of graduating with a major in biology.
Lenz has also picked up an unanticipated minor in art history, but her keen eye for the aesthetic beauties of the past does not lead her to view the future through rose-colored glasses. Instead, she said about her future, “I picture an amoeba, something ... changing forms based on the second or millisecond.”
Next year, Lenz might find gainful employment as a medical scribe or in some sort of position requiring a balance of clinical and bench work. Then, after a few years, she fully intends to enter medical school. At least, that’s the trajectory that she imagines for herself today.
“I might go a couple weeks and be like ‘Man, I really want to be a cheese scientist,’” Lenz said.
In her current microbiology course, Lenz has been learning about the microbes in cheese, and she has entertained the notion of writing a combined science book and cookbook someday.
“I’m worried about just saying no to opportunities and then waking up and being like, ‘Oh, I’m old. I could have pursued this, and who knows where it would have taken me?’” she said.
At Tufts, Lenz has bucked hard against the stereotype of the cookie-cutter, pre-med biology major. She competes on the varsity sailing team. She passed up Tufts’ early-assurance program for its medical school. She studied abroad in Spain last spring.
Nonetheless, Lenz loves biology. “I think science is really beautiful in a lot of contexts,” she said. Thus, when she described the future as something “pretty ominous and flexible and not at all finite,” she can rest assured that one way or another, her passion for science will guide her to a satisfying career.
In the meantime, Lenz wants to capitalize on her remaining months at Tufts. She asks herself, “What am I going to do to make sure that every single day, I feel like I’ve done something?”
Mostly, she answers herself by spending valuable time with friends. “I’m studying, but I’m also making sure I’m getting a glass of wine with someone ... or I’m going to a friend’s birthday,” Lenz said. “I’m trying to do something where I’m getting out of my second-floor kitchenette of the SEC [Science and Engineering Complex].”
“Getting out of my second-floor kitchenette of the SEC” sounds like a euphemism for “graduating,” but looking ahead, Lenz said, “I’m very much a proponent of ‘Life never throws anything at you that you can’t handle.’ It’s just [about] building support systems.”
Of course, in the short term, Lenz wouldn’t mind it if life threw a job at her. The future might resemble an amoeba under the little toy microscope her mother once gifted her, but Lenz will forge ahead with her support systems firmly in place.
From Seniors to Citizens: Picture an amoeba
