Finding water
Palevsky's love of water extends back to middle school. As a sixth-grader at a small public school outside of Pittsburgh, she found herself studying water quality in science class and doing field work in a local stream. "When I was in sixth grade, [her science teacher] got this grant to go to Finland and present the research he had been doing," she said. "And he got to take a couple of students and I wrote an essay that got me able to be one of the students who went to Finland."
The first of her many adventures, the trip to Finland was most memorable for some strange sites the sixth-graders encountered along the way. "The public urinals, the guy who peed off the bridge, the Chinese guys who went swimming in their underwear that got see-through and traumatized one of the girls in our group … Those were all more exciting than the culture of Finland," acknowledged Palevsky. "I was maybe too young to appreciate how cool it was. But it was really amazing."
Despite her age, Palevsky enjoyed the trip enough to decide that she wanted to work on independent science projects for the American Academy of Science throughout high school. She also immediately got involved in campus life upon arriving at the College. "I wasn't the kind of person who did leadership, advocacy stuff [in high school]," she said. "When I came to Amherst, I was really excited to be able to join established groups."
By the end of orientation, she had a position as a MASSPIRG Water Watch intern. For the next four years, Palevsky remained an integral part of Water Watch. "I started doing more of the education, mainly water quality to encourage the campus and the outside community to take responsibility for our local waterways," she explained.
Her academic focus grew with her involvement in local environmental issues. Arriving at the College as a 16-year-old first-year, Palevsky had never even considered potential majors. "I was like, 'Wow, there are so many classes, it sounds so cool. I'm so excited to be in college!'" she said.
Having been so involved with environmental issues in high schools, she knew she wanted to take a couple of classes in the geology department, but she first stumbled upon the introductory class by accident. "Actually, first semester I was supposed to take multivariable calculus at 9 a.m. with a professor who was notoriously really, really boring," Palevsky related. "I was convinced during orientation that that was a really bad idea, so I had to change my whole schedule around to make it work. Geo 11 was just a class that fit in that 9 a.m. slot and I took it."
Palevsky liked the class enough to take another in the department second semester and, by the beginning of sophomore year, she was sure she had found her major. "It's both a really well-taught intro class, which is seductive in many ways, but also the subject material seemed really relevant [and] something I had never had a chance to learn about," she said.
Suddenly, she had found a subject matter that informed her love of the environment-and it was even fashionable. "Earth science is the kind of thing you take in middle school or if you're not good enough to take another science in high school," she recalled. "The smart kids didn't take earth science in high school. Then suddenly it was this really, really cool subject."
Religious adventures
Though extremely involved in the Water Watch campaigns, Palevsky made sure to do other things to keep her routine varied. Having been involved with Hillel since first semester because she knew they "would be nice to me," it became clear by her sophomore year that she was essentially the only one available to become president. "The board was a little smaller and more in need of people … and [reading Hebrew] was one of the few actual skills I came to college with," acknowledged Palevsky.
When she took over the role of president in the first semester of her sophomore year, her main goal was to oversee a transition to being more "religiously inclusive," as she termed it. "What I wanted to do for Hillel was to make the religious aspect and the things that weren't entirely a-religious available to people who didn't grow up conservative."
She was president for only one semester, however, and her next adventure was to blame.
Luminescence
Entering sophomore year, Palevsky had never seriously considered attending the Williams-Mystic Program. But, in the end, she simply couldn't ignore the signs that pointed her towards the maritime studies program jointly run by Williams College and Mystic Seaport (Conn.). "I kept seeing the admissions director sitting in the campus center. I kept seeing her and I kept thinking that I should really do that … I knew I liked environmental things and everything about it sounded amazing."
So she finally decided to go for it, and it turned out to be, in her words, "the defining moment of the academic part of college." She explained it was largely because that "was the point I … found something that I was really, really passionate about."
Much of the credit for that goes to the unique way in which the program is run. "It was the kind of education where you learn a lot and you don't even realize entirely how much you're learning because it's just really fun," described Palevsky. With only 18 students enrolled in the program her semester, she described nights where the students would just sit around and debate maritime policies. "Before I knew I liked environmental things and studying water stuff," she said. "But going there, the combination of having really cool interdisciplinary work and field seminars, and probably also the professors who were passionate about what they do … Williams-Mystic was the thing that got me really excited about something specific, instead of simply 'I like learning.'"
The benefits from the program exceeded the mere academic gains, however. "I feel really cool sending [the Williams transcript] off with my Amherst transcript … it's purple and kind of attractive," joked Palevsky. In reality, though, the program helped greatly to focus her academic work. While she'd known from the beginning that she wanted to focus on the water portion of geology, she didn't take those classes until returning from sea. From there, her thesis began to fall into place.
As the College is a part of a geology consortium, Palevsky applied directly to an established project for her thesis work. The consortium organized a number of studies, but, coincidentally, the one to which she was drawn was the only one with an Amherst professor involved. The project involved nine students from across the country who worked on it for four weeks over the summer, before continuing their individual research and using it for their theses. "It was good to focus on something specific and then have other people working on the project," explained Palevsky.
For two weeks during the summer before senior year, the group collected data on a small island near Puerto Rico. The points of interest were three bioluminescence bays on the island. What stuck most in Palevsky's mind was the undeniable beauty of the bays: "If you go swimming, you make glow angels. When it rains, it makes dots of light in the water. It was really, really beautiful." The coolest thing she did, she acknowledged, "was [to] go skinny-dipping in the bioluminescence." But the research wasn't something to laugh at either. "Geo research is just incredible," gushed Palevsky. "We got paid to go swimming and snorkeling and play around in the mud every day."
The group aspect of the project added a lot to the experience. "We each had our own specific thing we were doing with the project. But we shared our data for background information," she explained. The writing aspect of thesis actually wasn't that bad. As she expected to do, Palevsky wrote most of it after she'd finished most of the lab tests, because that allowed her to have a better grasp of what the data meant. And the group of nine students reconvened two weeks before the project was due to talk about their conclusions in person, which helped to pull everything together.
An Icelandic sojourn
During the entire thesis process, she couldn't ignore the question of what to do after graduation. And, as any senior will attest, it can be stressful to apply to fellowships and jobs and grad schools. However, Palevsky's positive attitude and strong academic record served her well in the process, helping her to net a Thomas Watson Fellowship. The basic requirements for the fellowship are simple: Recipients must spend a year outside of the United States conducting an independent study project on a subject of their choice. "It's actually kind of incredible that there's someone out there who thinks kids are important enough to give money for something like this," said Palevsky. "Basically, they fund people to go on adventures."
The search was, in some ways, as entertaining as the final outcome. "I applied for two [fellowships] for grad school: the Rhodes and the Marshall," said Palevsky with a smile. "They're both really pretentious, which is why I really don't like talking about it."
But the application process, especially for the Rhodes Scholarship, was especially interesting. "The Rhodes interview was probably the most pretentious experience of my life," she laughed. All the finalists were invited to a weekend in Philadelphia. There was a cocktail party for all of the finalists and the members of the committee. The next morning, the committee conducted interviews, spending the day deliberating and calling people back for second interviews; they decided on the recipients while all the candidates were still in Philadelphia. "I enjoyed the experience, particularly because I wasn't really all that set on winning," she explained.
Not receiving the Rhodes Scholarship actually worked out for the better for Palevksy, because she would have had to withdraw from the Watson process had she been offered the Rhodes. And, though she knows that she likely wants to do something involving maritime studies, she's not quite ready to go back to school. "I would want to be doing research where, somewhere down the line, it would be able to be doing something useful," she explained. "But one of the reasons I'm not going directly to grad school is because I'm not really sure what I want to be doing."
Palevsky still doesn't know her exact plans for the year, but she doesn't seem worried. "I haven't gotten plane tickets yet because I want to go to Iceland first … and I don't have great contacts there yet."
For Palevsky it appears that the more spontaneous the experience, the more of an adventure.
Leaving a colorful legacy
The legacy Palevsky leaves at the College is one of complete openness and friendliness. Rebecca Oyen, a rising junior and outgoing president of Hillel, calls Palevsky "the reason I came to Amherst." Oyen remembers Palevsky from when she visited the College as a prospective student. "I was so impressed by Hilary," said Oyen. "She was so incredibly friendly and welcoming." And, though Palevsky has, in her words, "learned recently to be a little more hands-off" with Hillel, she has continued to be an incredible mentor to the junior leaders.
Even her professors recognize her energetic and bright personality. Professor Tekla Harms wrote in a recommendation: "She has the most amazing collection of rainbow-colored clothes. I wonder what she will wear at graduation?"
When she finally takes that diploma, Palevsky will be putting the final touches on one adventure just as she's walking into another. In less than three months, she'll be on a plane to the North Atlantic, ready to throw her exuberance into the study of cod fishery policies. One thing is certain: for that year abroad, she might miss her family and friends. But she won't ever regret the decision to jump, head first, into another adventure.