My name is Wadzanai Motsi and I am a second year student here from Harare, Zimbabwe. Over the summer I got to travel across the United States as part of the Fischlowitz Travel Grant programs, which is available to international students - hence the picture of me in Times Square, in New York City. I also had the opportunity of working with a Grinnell alumnus, who recently founded an organization called Every Child is My Child, which is geared towards funding high school education for students in Rwanda and Burundi. I have often joked with people about how I know what I want to do with the rest of my life, but I have no idea what to major in.

My summer travel and work reinforced my desire to work in the development field and learn how to make people's lives better. That's definitely a task easier said than done, but Grinnell is a place where an idea like mine might actually be feasible. There are no core requirements for students apart from one's major requirements and a student can take courses as varied as astronomy and African Politics in the same semester. To me, that also means that I can take courses geared towards learning more about development, while taking classes in music and hopefully theater, which I absolutely love. I can learn to prepare for my future, yet enjoy my here and now at the same time. I'm looking forward to this year as I begin to figure out exactly what my major will be and what courses I will choose, with regards to my future goals and aspirations. So this is my goal this semester, as I learn about the relevance of Economic statistics and the history of the kings of France, in French; to keep my future asp irations in mind but relish the relative simplicity of what I have to do today.

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