1983: Dear Professor Randy Bartlett, Do what YOU were meant to do

Dear Professor Bartlett,

Eighteen-year-old me arrived at Smith College in 1981 with a pretty vague idea of my areas of academic and or professional interest.  My much older siblings were wrapping up medical school training and PHD’s.  Confidence in most situations, curiosity and a knack for unifying a group were my strengths, but I had a healthy insecurity of my brain power by comparison.  

I was delighted to be offered an internship at the Federal Reserve as part of my Junior Year off campus.  This was a very respectable and cerebral choice I could certainly learn from and be proud of.  Yet, out of the blue, a completely different option came my way to be part of a cable television film project in conservation. 

I will never forget your wise and helpful counsel as I wrestled between the safer choice that lived up to my self-imposed familial pressure and option that really lit up my imagination.  

In the end, with your help, I leapt to the riskier choice – working on endangered species film making as an emerging source of income and interest for environmental causes.  I absolutely loved it and the experience was a very critical first brick in the yellow brick road building of the career I was meant to have, not the one I thought I should.

Thank you for being such a great advisor,

Ann Simonds’

AKA Annie Hoagland 

Class of 1985

aka Annie Hoagland