Daredevil in disguise
Stein remembers that as a first-year, she had matters less serious than anthropology and teaching on her mind. "It all started with an idea a friend and I had, to go onto the roof of James [Dormitory] at night and rappel down the side," she said. Predictably, they were soon joined by other friends, and the group's nocturnal activities entered campus folklore. Stein recalled with a smile, "Campus Police were aware that students were doing this sort of thing, but they could never catch us in the act. We did Stearns [Dormitory], Merrill [Science Building], Mead [Art Museum], Pond [Dormitory] and a bunch of other less challenging buildings. I'd love to try Johnson Chapel, but I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon."
In addition to on-campus pranks, Stein was very active in the Pioneer Valley. In her junior year, she volunteered to work with the Holyoke division of Girls Incorporated, a nationally-funded program that provides educational services for girls. Among the activities Stein supervised were field trips, museum and theater outings and sporting events. "I absolutely loved the girls, they were so much fun and always welcoming and eager to learn," she said.
When the frequent trips to Holyoke became difficult due to an increased senior workload, Stein found something similar a little closer to Amherst: tutoring students from Amherst Regional High School as part of the Prep Academy program. She feels that the experience prepared her with a useful tutorial for next year, when she will be teaching English in Ecuador, though she knows it will be very different to teach in a foreign country.
Anthropologist in the making
Her crowded schedule rarely let up in her summers, either. Sophomore summer saw Stein studying European Integration and Human Rights Laws for eight weeks in Ireland. After junior year, she returned to a more traditional arrangement and interned in the law initiative program at Cultural Survival. The Harvard-affiliated organization was then drafting a declaration for indigenous rights, for which Stein was involved extensively as a PR representative.
The communication skills honed in those weeks in Cambridge evolved into invaluable tools for Stein's senior thesis as she sought to explore the correlations between anthropology, politics and conflicts. She explained, "For example, not many people know that 20 of the 27 federal advisors for the Japanese-American internment operations during World War II were anthropologists." Entitled "Citizenship, Democracy and Ethics in Wartime Anthropology," her thesis research entailed interviewing 14 anthropologists for source material.
She said of the challenge, "Interviewing these respected figures required a variety of methods. I talked to people who had been in the CIA and also others who were friends with [former Secretary of State Henry] Kissinger. It was sometimes quite daunting." The anthropologists had all been approached by the U.S. government to work in various positions for the current Iraq War. Many had turned down the offers while others were actively involved in the rebuilding process.
The many hours of sweat and labor invested in her thesis culminated in its nomination for and winning of the Donald S. Pitkin Prize. Named the best-written senior thesis in the anthropology department, the accolade was a fitting validation of the groundbreaking nature and genuine quality of her work. Looking back on the entire experience without having to worry about the product, Stein observed, "I think [researching and writing the thesis] forced me on a number of levels to engage myself more intellectually. I wasn't sure where it would have taken me when I first started in September, and it has just gone in a lot of very stimulating directions."
Stein's favorite moment of her time at Amherst, though, remains in the pool. "It's got to be beating the Williams College swim team as a junior. They had been previously unbeaten in their swim meet history, somewhere near 18 years. It was even better than coming in second in the Nationals for the 400-meter medley relay, which was a big deal," she recalled. Despite winning medals at meets and having broken a couple of school records in her college career, Stein said that it won't be the feeling of churning water that she will miss but her teammates. Given her close attachment to the team-she lived her senior year with six other swimmers-she will fly to Ecuador on the back of plenty of well-wishes and fond memories.
Every graduating senior has his or her own set of reminisces of the four years spent in the little college nestled in the valley. For Stein, "each year has been so different from the others. It's definitely gone by a lot faster than expected. It will be hard to leave, and as much as I'm not going to miss the all the work, especially for the thesis, a part of me would like to stay a year just to do it all over again."