Testimonials

Nicole McKenny '06

"At College of the Atlantic," says Nicole McKenny, "you're not just learning information, you're really questioning your fundamental ideas on what it means to be learning.  Here, I've become a questioner.  My education hasn't just been about learning what I need to put myself in a career slot, fitting into some mold.  It's about developing myself, learning what kinds of questions I want to ask, and constantly questioning."

Initially, Nicole was considering larger schools, but when she came here to visit, she was immediately attracted to COA's philosophy of small classes. "There's no barrier between yourself and your teachers," she says. "You're on their level. It's as important for them to learn from you as you to learn from them."

At COA, Nicole has focused on writing, literature and social theory. "I'm most passionate about writing, but I really love that you have the freedom here to experiment with classes outside my field. If I had been in a school with a major, there would be so many more requirements."

Nicole talks about taking math classes with Dave Feldman but doing projects that related to her sense of language and philosophy. "For Chaos and Complex systems," she says, "I did a project on language as a mathematical complex system, built on patterns, rejecting chaos." For Quantum Mechanics, she wrote about Jack Kerouac and the Buddhist implications in quantum mechanics' undeterministic nature. But mostly, while at COA, she's been writing. It's what she's always done, and ultimately what she hopes to do. Last year, she launched a novel in Bill Carpenter's Starting Your Novel class. This year, she's writing her autobiography.

She's hoping her internship will bring her to a small press, and that her senior project will bring that press to COA where she will create a collection of poems or fiction.