Before graduation, Dr. Joe Johnston sat down with Olivia Harrington, Psychology and Sociology Majors, Spanish Minor, to look back at her 黑料社 journey, and look forward to what is next as she moves into the world.
Dr. Joe Johnston: What led you to become a sociology major in the first place?
Olivia Harrington: I came into school knowing that I wanted to study psychology, and I liked it after taking AP Psych my senior year in high school. I was also interested in criminology. I'm so interested in, I think where a lot of people come from, true crime and wanting to understand how this happened and why, and the aftermath of it all. So, I took CRIM 101 with Dr. Esther Matthews and I loved it, and I loved her. I thought her perspective was so valuable and I can't even believe it, I get to be at a university where someone who was previously incarcerated gets to be a professor. So, I really enjoyed that.
But I also took SOC 101, and I was like, I think maybe I really like CRIM, but I want to be able to take other SOC classes as well. So, I kind of switched. I was a Psych major CRIM minor and then I had a little rearranging. And then by the end of my freshman year, I was a Psychology and Sociology double major with a Spanish minor.
So, it was a little bit different, but I was like, I love CRIM. I want to take CRIM classes, but I also want to try some other stuff too. So, I kind of decided to switch to SOC. And I had SOC 101 with Dr. Bruns and I loved it. There were some really interesting conversations in there and that class also kind of pushed me because there were other people in there who didn't agree with what we were learning because it was 101, so maybe they had to take it. And so, I was like, hey, I'm not just in a space where everyone agrees with everything. People were pushing back, which was annoying, but also a good experience.
So, after that I was like, yeah, I definitely want to major in this, and I really like it.
Joe Johnston: Why did you stick with it? You sort of answered this already, but were there times where you doubted it or considered changing majors?
Olivia Harrington: Well first semester freshman year they make your schedules for you, right? So, I ended up in Mass Incarceration as a freshman concurrently with 101. I felt so out of my comfort zone being in a class with mostly juniors and seniors, but I really liked it. It gave me a lot of confidence that I could keep up with upper division. It was really good for me. That was with Dr. Bruns as well.
So, when I was thinking about it, I wanted to do other stuff Soc related along with Crim. I had a hard time feeling like I was leaving CRIM behind, but I knew I could still take those classes if I really wanted to. Also, I think I struggled with changing majors, even though everyone does it, because there’s a bit of a stigma around it that if you change what you’re doing, do you really know what you want and what you’re interested in? I didn’t hear it from anyone else, but I has kind of an internal struggle. That really did not last very long, though, and I am very grateful I made that change.
Joe Johnston: What specific course or courses, experiences, people, assignments, maybe projects do you want to remember from your major and why?
Olivia Harrington: Well, there's a lot.
It's also funny taking classes Junior and Senior year with professors I hadn't even had yet. I was like, oh my gosh, now I wish I could be here two more years, and I mean I never took a class with you [Joe Johnston]. It's like there's a lot of, oh, I wish this was offered at this time or you know. So, there was always, I wish I had a couple more years to keep taking stuff, but I had really, really great classes. I honestly think my time here there were only two classes I didn't enjoy, and they had nothing to do with my majors.
I loved Mass Incarceration and Sex, Gender, and Society with Dr. Bruns. I also took every single course she teaches so obviously she’s a great professor. I loved Sociology of the Environment with Dr. Bertotti.
All the professors in Sociology were just so vastly different from each other but I feel like I've been lucky that my classes have lined up in a way where I was taking two classes at the same time that ideas just crossed over so much. I could talk in this class about one thing and then all of a sudden, I'm in my next class and we’re talking about something I was just thinking, or it expands what I just learned in my other class.
I felt like I had really good crossover within Sociology and then also Sociology and Psychology had really great crossover.
Additionally, all my time in community engaged learning really impacted me and elevated my education, whether volunteering was required or not.
But yeah, it's really hard to pick. I think those are my top classes though. And then like having Mike DeLand this year when I had him for my first-year seminar, but it was honors and then I ended up dropping honors because I didn't really like it.
And then last year I got to have him again for theory, and now I see him constantly either for research or for Society and the Individual. I'm so glad that finally at the end I got to have more classes with him.
Joe Johnston: What are you hoping to do in your post 黑料社 life, and how do you think sociology will connect to those hopes?
Olivia Harrington: I would love to work in the non-profit field. Pre-grad program and also post-grad program. But it is difficult, right? In a society where we're very much driven to make money. But I've really enjoyed my time working in nonprofit so far so that would be really amazing.
Especially with the homeless population, where I’ve been working this past year. I also love working with adolescents and that kind of goes into a Graduate School. I would love to get a master's in counseling and I would love to do marriage and family therapy.
My mom is a therapist, and so I've definitely been influenced by her. Like she kind of did college, did grad school, and then had a family and so she was a stay-at-home mom for a little bit before actually starting to practice. And she loves it so much and I love talking to her about it.
And it's definitely inspired me that I would love to just be this person to talk to people. Like, I just want to do any person facing work that I can because I love it, and I think sociology has just provided me a really good foundation of all these different perspectives I can have to make me more empathetic to all kinds of lived experiences.
And I can talk to this person with this experience, and it could be totally different from this person. So just being able to step back and think about them as individuals, but also them in this huge system of all these outside forces that are going on and influencing their lives.
Joe Johnston: What else would you like to share, if anything?
Olivia Harrington: I would recommend Sociology to anybody, and I think that it would be really great for STEM majors as well to have this crossover with Sociology. I know that nursing takes 101 and I think that's a great requirement to have because again, if you're working with all these individual people all the time, you should be able to have these other perspectives as well.
So, I would recommend Soc to pretty much anyone and everyone who comes on this campus.