To wrap up her sophomore semester in Hamilton’s New York City program, Aleta Brown ’17 created a podcast about the struggles and successes of women of color in the music industry. The project still stands out for her.
“It entailed combining all of the subject areas included in my interdisciplinary concentration – communication, music, Africana studies – in order to produce a final product that did justice to the complex stories of these women,” Brown says.
As right as that project felt, it wasn't the sort of study Brown initially envisioned for herself. She found her way to it. She started at Hamilton thinking she’d be premed. “And by the end of my first year I was drafting my interdisciplinary concentration proposal in an entirely different subject area,” she says. The title of her concentration is "International Communication and Media Studies."
Brown is looking at how we’ve changed the way we communicate in a globalized world that revolves around technology – and how we manage identities and relationships through these new mediums.
Based on her experience at Hamilton, Brown offers this bit of advice to future students: “Do not be afraid of failure because growth and knowledge are a combination of understanding our individual strengths and weaknesses. In order to truly succeed at this college you must stay open to challenges that remove you from your comfort zone.”
