Guest Heather McNemar experienced a taste of world travel while in high school, when her father took a sabbatical and the family visited many spots, including Siberia for a slightly extended stay. Heather was drawn to the language and the culture and knew she would study both in college. Later, as she was making her way into the world, she didn’t know exactly how she would use her skills but knew she wanted to help people. She got a job helping newly settled immigrants to the U.S. get jobs and r...
Nov 28, 2022•24 min•Season 7Ep. 113
Guest Kristen Calcagni Johnson pinned her early thoughts of being a doctor on her ability to stay calm when everyone else was stressing out. But even more core to her personality is her drive to experience many things, find joy in varied activities, and live into many facets of her identity and a balanced life. Since she was choosing colleges to today, she has always known that—while she takes her work and her activities seriously—she is willing to accept a little imperfection if it means that s...
Nov 21, 2022•27 min•Season 7Ep. 112
Guest Jenny Land Mackenzie grew up in Vermont and figured she would likely return there one day. However, her college career—filled as it was with all sort of creative explorations and outdoor adventures—set her up to delve into one passion only to have it lead her to another passion. This began when her interest in the history of clothing led her to an internship at a museum led by a mentor who would ultimately spark a passion for organic farming. The love of the land led her to other gardening...
Nov 14, 2022•29 min•Season 7Ep. 111
Guest Amel Ahmed ventured to college from an urban immigrant community and she spent much of her college career trying to figure out what was happening—academically, socially, culturally. She realized that she found comfort in embedding herself in the liminal spaces and really probing them, using the eye of an astute ethnographer and sleuthing historian. By the time she was ready to leave her undergraduate experience, she had a laser focus on continuing to study the Middle East and how ideals an...
Nov 07, 2022•26 min•Season 7Ep. 110
Guest Luke Brown had a long-standing desire to become a professor. Though both English and physics seemed plausible at one point, he was pulled into the study of history through a classics course. His senior year of college, he thought he had it all figured out: he got engaged to his college girlfriend and he was applying to graduate school. He ended up getting married, but he also got rejected from every history graduate program to which he had applied. He got back on track a year later, but ul...
Oct 31, 2022•28 min•Season 7Ep. 109
Guest John Peoples had never considered himself a science person, let alone one to follow the pre-med track. He had only a sense that he was independent and wanted to help people. After an off-term spent caring for his ailing grandfather and hearing his grandmother's stories about caregivers in their family, he began to reconsider a career in medicine. He returned to school and fleshed out his history major with pre-med requirements. With not quite enough time to finish and take the MCAT before ...
Oct 24, 2022•25 min•Season 7Ep. 108
Guest Patricia Herrera was on the premed path, happily thinking of herself as a STEM person. A chance encounter with Latinx theater in a freshman seminar led her to take to the stage and realized she loved it. She infused her science studies with healthy doses of theater opportunities but always thought of those pursuits as a hobby. After a term-long immersion experience with peers who were thinking about the stage as a profession, she received advice from a counselor: You don’t have to do what ...
Oct 17, 2022•30 min•Season 7Ep. 107
Guest Joseph Marcheso was six or seven years old when he found out that being an opera conductor was something someone could do. From that moment, he knew he wanted to be one. So going to an Ivy League school was somewhat of an insurance policy in case he decided to let go of his dream. When his dream didn’t change, it became a bit of a liability as it disconnected him from the musical world for a number of years. Through persistence, he built the connections and skills that he needed by conduct...
Oct 10, 2022•34 min•Season 7Ep. 106
Guest Tiernan Sittenfeld had glimpses in high school of not only the grandeur of America's landscapes but also the degradation that was happening within them when she saw clear cuts up close. She was drawn to understand how we can best conserve these lands and the communities linked to them and took advantage of the first opportunity to earn an Environmental Studies certificate in college and take an international study program in Kenya. Those experiences, and a term spent working on a state sen...
Oct 03, 2022•27 min•Season 7Ep. 105
Guest Cameron Turner had come to college with a full-sized drafting table and a dream to become an architect. He had to build his own academic program, augmenting his studio art major with an engineering minor and internship experiences at a variety of architecture firms. Going through corporate recruiting, he got an opportunity to work at Microsoft and figured it would be an experience for a couple years. The company sought his design skills, however, to help make its productivity products more...
Sep 26, 2022•28 min•Season 7Ep. 104
Guest Keshav Puttaswamy was excited to be able to dabble in the full liberal arts curriculum of college and found an interest in computer science. When he had the opportunity to intern at Microsoft in a rather new role of product manager he took it despite not knowing what it would entail. He ended up learning a lot about not only computer science but also how the business worked and had fun doing it. But it felt didn’t feel like a mainstream route for either a computer scientist or a business p...
Sep 19, 2022•32 min•Season 7Ep. 103
Guest Suzanne Leonard joined the staff of The Dartmouth, but realized the pace of a daily paper didn’t give her time to spend with the stories or the words she was writing. A work-study job at the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine gave her a taste of a different pace that suited her better. A double English and psychology major, she found the perfect internship, working as an assistant at Psychology Today and left college convinced she would work in magazine publishing. Landing at Fitness magazine, she ...
Sep 12, 2022•24 min•Season 7Ep. 102
The 25th-ish college reunion that many of the shows guests and host Leslie Jennings Rowley were able to attend this summer was a great chance to reconnect, and she felt as though that they were able to greet one another with a lot more authenticity this time around. It could have just been their slightly advanced age and the wisdom that comes with it. But enough people mentioned that having heard classmates’ stories ahead of time—where they shared their vulnerabilities, their twists and turns, t...
Sep 11, 2022•1 min
The original aim of this podcast series was to tell the stories of many classmates of the Dartmouth Class of 1996 before our 25th reunion. Due to the postponement, we've had a chance to interview even more people than we thought we could. The Reunion is coming up next week and we can't wait to make even deeper connections in person in a live event and just through normal conversation. The show will be taking a much deserved hiatus. But before we do take a break, we wanted to reflect on what we l...
Jul 11, 2022•3 min
Guest Oliver Will was always good at math and when he got to college he figured he would parlay that into a science or engineering degree. While taking the mathematics prerequisites for a number of majors, he realized he liked the theoretical elegance of the math itself. And yet, he was interested in real-world applications, too. A course in bioethics introduced him to the idea of the computational work involved the human genome sequencing and the idea of bio-statistics. He applied to graduate p...
Jul 04, 2022•30 min•Season 6Ep. 101
Guest Brendan Doherty had entered college thinking he was a math and science person, was then drawn to government but his choice of major—geography—ultimately felt made for him when the government courses were all full. His post-college decision points, however, seemed to always weigh the balance between two weighty options. First he needed to decide whether he would stick with the favored idea of law school and not fully enjoy the work or choose a riskier unsure path. Then, when conflicting rel...
Jun 27, 2022•23 min•Season 6Ep. 100
Recently , ROADS TAKEN sat down to talk with Lara Fowler about her tendency to become and remain curious about things, leading her to a wide variety of interests and ultimately into a career in water resource management.When the coronavirus pandemic hit, she had to wind down a year living in Sweden with her family and navigate her husband’s long covid symptoms on two continents. Join Leslie Jennings Rowley as she talks to Lara about this for a special covid-19 Bonus Episode of ROADS TAKEN. For m...
Jun 25, 2022•13 min
Guest Lara Fowler had been a cross-country ski racer and studied Japanese in high school in Portland, Oregon. She took those two pursuits to college and pursued them to their highest. With all of the language requirements and a study abroad program that she wanted to undertake, she had nearly completed a major in Asian Studies. But she also had a long-standing interest in water. So in fulfilling her distribution requirements, she found ways to study water from multiple angles, did off-campus res...
Jun 20, 2022•27 min•Season 6Ep. 99
Guest John Strayer had figured his post-graduation life would find him either the author of the Great American Novel or dead. While his ambition was large, so was his problem with alcohol. His alcoholism made him limp along senior year. Luckily, as he says, he hit rock bottom soon thereafter and has been sober 25 years. While the Midwest was a good landing pad while he got his life back on track, he missed the pace and intellectualism of the east coast and picked up and moved to D.C. He knew law...
Jun 13, 2022•29 min•Season 6Ep. 98
Last week, to mark both memorial day and our 96th full-length episode of Roads Taken, we presented the first in this two-part series in which we remember those classmates in Dartmouth’s Class of 1996 who have died. Although their roads were too short, their stories stay with us. In this second of two episodes, we remember nine of the nineteen classmates who have died: Katherine Domingo Grier Laughlin Leigh Warren Pei Lynn Yee Maribel Sanchez Souther Tom McClure Andre Junior Jason York Russell Da...
Jun 06, 2022•12 min•Season 6Ep. 97
On this memorial day, when the country mourns the loss of the U.S. military personnel who have died while serving in the United States armed forces, we join in the tradition of giving solemn thanks and remembrance. To mark our 96th full-length episode of Roads Taken, we are presenting this special Memorial Day episode in which we remember those classmates in Dartmouth’s Class of 1996 who have died. Only one of these classmates served in the U.S. military, though they all shared a spirit of servi...
May 30, 2022•11 min•Season 6Ep. 96
Guest Michael Roberts had already taken on the identity of musician—specifically singer—while in high school. He was encouraged by his parents to attend college where he could be pursue what he loved while being exposed to a wide range of subjects and experiences through a liberal arts curriculum. It would also be convenient if he attended Dartmouth, the same place his three siblings had already enrolled. And so he did, and he continued to live into the singer identity, graduating into a master’...
May 23, 2022•29 min•Season 6Ep. 95
Guest Kira Lawrence felt, in high school, that she was considered odd by the academic kids because she was a “jock” and wasn’t quite a mainstream athlete because she was a “brain.” In college she felt accepted for both of those identities in a place that had lots of people who were both. But, in realizing she was gay, she gained a whole new perspective on what it meant to feel “othered.” While initially frustrating, she contends that that perspective has infused her personal and professional pas...
May 16, 2022•40 min•Season 6Ep. 94
Guest Sharon Walker left her home in Trinidad for college in New Hampshire, thinking it was somewhere close to New York City. She quickly realized the cosmopolitan life she’d anticipated wasn’t what she would be living. So that first year was rather miserable. It was only after deciding that summer that she’d fling herself into activities that she started feeling part of the community and took advantage of what college could offer her. Upon graduation, she finally made it to New York, living wit...
May 09, 2022•24 min•Season 6Ep. 93
Guest Dave Leone realized during college that his interest in chemistry might not be long lived. Instead, he found earth sciences. Upon graduation, he options were graduate school, petroleum geology, or environmental geology. He found a small environmental firm that let him do a little of everything and then moved on to a larger firm where he has stayed for nearly a quarter century, assessing contaminated properties and remediating them for beneficial use. It was at the firm—during a 200-mile ch...
May 02, 2022•21 min•Season 6Ep. 92
Guest Stephanie Argamaso knew exactly who she was when she entered college: a quiet perfectionist—to the point of having to write a script for her pizza order to place next to the phone. She majored in environmental science and minored in religion but didn’t see herself using those fields after graduation. In order not to have to go home to New York, she stuck around Hanover for a couple extra years and had the fortune to audit a filmmaking class, which sparked her interest. She ended up taking ...
Apr 25, 2022•29 min•Season 6Ep. 91
Guest Rebecca Benn was excited to meet new people at college since she had been with the same small handful of schoolmates in her Mississippi Catholic school for her entire upbringing. Despite the welcome diversity of experiences of that she saw in her college friends, however, she also recognized similarities in values and inquisitiveness. She immersed herself in making deep friendships and in subjects that brought her enjoyment, namely English literature and education. She didn’t think these w...
Apr 18, 2022•26 min•Season 6Ep. 90
Guest Nakiah Cherry Chinchilla shared part one of her Roads Taken story, in which she talked about her early career in fashion and television and how she was always listening to her heart and feeling as though she were called to do more. At the same time, her home life became very confusing when her husband began exhibiting odd behaviors. That chapter ended as her husband Mike—who had been hospitalized numerous times for mental illness—came home and things between them seemed to repair themselve...
Apr 11, 2022•43 min
Guest Nakiah Cherry Chinchilla felt as though she was born a generation too late, as she has always felt a call to advocate for societal change and for help people. But she also has listened to the call to go out on the town and live it up. Upon leaving college, she entered into the fashion industry in New York, taking on public relations and operations roles with big brands such as DKNY and fashion magazines such as Allure and Elle. Although it was fun to rub elbow with designers, photographers...
Apr 04, 2022•38 min•Season 6Ep. 89
Guest Aliza Pressman went to college wanting to develop a side of herself beyond her natural artistic side. Although she did have a range of experiences while there, she ended up combining her interests in art history, English literature, and drama and exploring the human condition throughout it all. Not wanting the experience to end with graduation, she and some friends started a theater company in New York. After a few years, when she saw that other people had deeper drive and talent than she ...
Mar 28, 2022•25 min•Season 6Ep. 88
