First impressions aren't everything

Yet another new member of our staff, Roxana McClammy, is a Tufts alum who packed her bags one day in August, and moved from Washington, DC back to the Boston area. Here, she tells us how her new role at the University has helped change her perception of Fletcher students.

While I was an undergraduate International Relations major at Tufts, I had several outsider impressions of The Fletcher School from occasions when I crossed paths with Fletcherites. With the International Relations office housed at Fletcher, undergraduate IR majors ventured periodically to the 6th Floor of the Cabot Center. I had several classes in ASEAN Auditorium and took a class with Prof. Leila Fawaz. I also attended two Fares Lectures: by General Colin Powell in 2001 and Former President Bill Clinton in 2002. Experiencing the disdain of the Fletcher students at that time, I also studied in the Ginn Library. As undergraduates, most of us thought of Fletcher students as chain-smoking, black-clad Europeans who hated undergraduates. I know better now.

After obtaining my degree in IR and Comparative Religion, I spent a summer being spoiled in Bahrain. Then I decided (or should I say, my parents decided) it would be best if I got a job. Having been raised in countries throughout the world, I didn’t have a hometown in the U.S. So I moved to Washington, DC, thinking that would be the proper thing for someone with a BA in IR to do. For me, this was a big mistake. Apparently all the other 2004 graduates in the entire U.S., who didn’t move to New York, also moved to DC. After two years, I decided I needed to get out of DC and back to a city I loved…Boston.

Currently working in the Admissions Office as an Admissions Coordinator, I am a Fletcher School insider, and my previous impressions of Fletcherites have changed significantly. They are not all European! In fact, of the 40 percent international students, 75 countries are represented. The other 60 percent are worldly Americans. They do not all wear black and very few chain smoke! The courses are rigorous and demanding, requiring the students to spend countless hours in the library. (So it is also understandable that they give the evil eye to that one loud undergraduate speaking on a cell phone in Ginn Library!) They are friendly and incredibly intelligent, and they have diversely interesting personalities and lives. As I read prospective students’ applications, and meet them as they visit Fletcher, I know we will continue to have such students here in September. The Fletcher School is welcoming, small and intimate, aware of the world community and, what I like best, a new “home” for me.