No one who knew Halle Becker ’15 in kindergarten should be surprised to hear that she’s in veterinary school. From her earliest days as a student she would would tell anyone who asked that she intended to be a vet some day. Becker (a dog person) is in her third year at Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. Her goal is a career in a small animal clinic.
At Hamilton she majored in biology and played soccer. “Soccer had always been a huge part of my life, and when I was visiting schools for soccer, just the feel of Hamilton and the type of people that were there were right for me. And I really liked that I could do research and the whole thesis concept, so it kind of drew me in,” Becker says.
The senior thesis is an intensive research project and was a critical part of Becker’s undergraduate experience. She and her research partner looked at the effects of antioxidants on learning and memory, related to dementia, acquiring research skills that have come in handy in vet school.
“I actually felt that I was better prepared than most coming here just because I think at a lot of (undergrad) schools don’t really teach you to think on your own, and they kind of hand the information to you, and in most of my Hamilton science classes you were given the basics and then you were expected to extrapolate from there, and that’s really everything that I’ve had to do here,” she says.
