I started at Peabody in kindergarten, when it was still in an office space. I remember being nervous as a new student, but one of my first Peabody memories was someone showing me a closet full of books (the library at the time) and that changed everything! In retrospect, it was fun to be part of Peabody at that time and get to see the school grow.
Peabody is such a wonderful environment. It really encouraged well-roundedness; I learned to play the flute and perform in plays. It was such a great balance of learning the fundamentals while also learning to explore my own interests. In 8th grade, we did an independent learning project where we could pick what we wanted to work on, and I remember I created an elaborate fantasy world that connected to my love of reading. The teachers inspired us, gave us tools, and then let us follow our own interests. They encouraged us to be curious and creative.
I still have the card Madame Meyer wrote me when I graduated from Peabody twenty years ago. I remember there was one word she’d included in French that I didn’t understand as an eighth grader, but I continued studying French in high school and college, and I remember finding that card and realizing that now I understood what she had written!
After Peabody, I went to Charlottesville High School along with nine of my ten Peabody classmates. Being at Peabody helped me learn to self-direct and follow what I was interested in. In high school, I realized I could be in control of what I wanted to learn, and made the effort to find classes that really worked for me. The grounding I gained from my Peabody experience, and the curiosity it nurtured in me, gave me a sense of confidence in high school. I came to understand how valuable it is to pursue learning that was really of interest to me.
I was chosen as an Echols Scholar at UVA, meaning I was able to direct my own course of study without core requirements. I double-majored in English and French, and then completed a master’s program in English at UVA. I then worked at Rare Book School at UVA for a few years, before moving to Scotland for grad school. I completed my PhD in English Literature at the University of Edinburgh in 2020.
I’m now the Head of Special Collections at Wesleyan University. I’ve always loved books, and in fact I volunteered in Peabody’s library doing book circulation back in middle school!
In my work, I spend a lot of time teaching. Wesleyan humanities and social sciences classes often visit Special Collections, and I’m able to teach students about how to engage with historical records both as texts and as material objects. We examine how we can gather information from these physical artifacts, everything from medieval manuscripts to 20th-century dustjackets. I also do a lot of work building the collections – assessing what we have and buying new items to fill in gaps. I am constantly learning new things!
My advice to Peabody students is trust your gut and take your interests seriously. Everyone I knew at Peabody was so bright and interesting and had such great ideas. The peer pressure can change quite radically in high school, but trust yourself and be open-minded. Going to Peabody was such a huge privilege, but heading into the bigger world, I realized it’s ok to be different, and you can learn so much from others and how they view the world.