The road to Tokyo
Awarded to 18 students each year, the Luce Fellowship gives college graduates with little exposure to Asian studies the opportunity to travel and learn in Asia. Palmer will receive a stipend for work from September to August at the International Herald Tribune in Tokyo, though the award is not limited to students with an interest in the field of journalism.
"I am going to work as a feature writer for The Tribune," said Palmer. "I am interested in writing about the subversive side of youth culture." Palmer also points out that the opportunity to write about women's issues may arise, because the Japanese prime minister's wife is due to have a baby during the course of her fellowship.
Adventures in journalism
Growing up in Bethesda, Md., Palmer never participated in any journalistic activities until she wrote a perspective piece for The Washington Post the summer after her senior year in high school. "The piece was called 'Get a Life, Not a Boyfriend,' and it was sort of a response to the high school relationship culture," she said.
Two summers ago, Palmer worked for USA Today, and she worked again for The Post last summer. "At USA Today, I worked for the editorial page, where I wrote about women's issues and did fact-checking for various articles." At The Post, she worked for the Style section, writing features about activists whose causes ranged from marijuana rights to domestic violence. Palmer discovered both jobs on the Internet. "Big companies like these are very good about broadcasting opportunities for internships and other jobs on their websites," she said.
While she has been at Amherst, Palmer has also worked for the Daily Hampshire Gazette. "Because I don't have a car, they send me out on the weekends to do stories on cultural events that take place in the center of Amherst." She has written about several historical celebrations in the Town of Amherst, as well as the more recent "Extravaganja" festival that took place on the green.
Palmer has continued her contact with The Post and USA Today during the school year as a freelance writer, writing articles on college issues for The Post's Features section and USA Today's Op-Ed section. "Just writing one or two pieces a month gives me the chance to make a little money here and there, as well as to explore my interests in journalism," she said.
One of Palmer's favorite aspects of journalism is the way in which it connects different geographical and ideological areas through communication. "I love it when readers write back and say why they agree or disagree with something I wrote," she said. "Once a woman in Minnesota wrote in response to an article I wrote on pornography on college campuses and asked me to have lunch with her."
Academic (in)decisions
Palmer initially chose to come to Amherst because of the neuroscience department, but her interests quickly shifted direction. "At my freshman year orientation, Dean [Frank] Couvares told us all to fall in love intellectually while we were here," she said. "A few months later, I realized that to do that I needed to switch from a neuroscience to a history major."
The class that Palmer has found to be most rewarding at Amherst has been Writing and Reform with Associate Professor of English and American Studies Karen Sànchez-Eppler. "It's a class about writers in the 1860s who used their writing skills to change social policy," she said. "It completely inspires me."
For her senior thesis, Palmer wrote about the speech code movement across college campuses during the 1980s, focusing on UMass and Dartmouth College. Working with Couvares, she has learned about First Amendment rights and has conducted interviews with over 50 professors from the schools.
Real life lessons realized
Palmer said that she has found that her sense of academic health has been fostered by Amherst's open and receptive faculty. "One of my favorite things about Amherst is the fact that professors will seriously entertain your ideas and help you apply them to real life," she said. "I've learned the most through the casual conversations I've had with them."
At this point in her life, Palmer's plans for work after her time in Asia are still up in the air. "I probably want to work as a features or editorial writer for an American newspaper or go to grad school for public policy," she said. "I'm just going to have to see what's out there for me."