As I was walking downtown last week, a glaring contrast caught my eye. Amid Corinthian columns, tympana, and anthacus-leafed corbels, the majority of pedestrians were dressed in camouflage—as if to reject the artifacts of civilization that surrounded them. For whatever reason, this scene sent me into a flurry of ideation as to the nature of modern society.

Despite being but a minor northern New York town, Canton’s architectural legacy speaks of the history of humankind. Accents plucked directly from ancient Greece and Rome dot the storefronts, several of which bear ornate, Renaissance-inspired facades. Other structures are of a more American sort, embellished with distinctive Victorian-era details. The courthouse on Court Street is an imposing Richardsonian-like behemoth, built for permanence and grandeur, acting to anchor and substantiate Canton’s position as the seat of St. Lawrence County—while the many town churches reflect their diversity in faith through diversity in architecture, with an assortment of styles spanning centuries of history. Despite this variety, these structures were built by a common impulse. It was the regular, ordinary people of Canton that erected these majestic buildings as legacy to future generations. Though material, they are a reflection of the popular mentality of their age; one of hard work, one of progress, one of community.

With this background, by the mid-twentieth century, a new arrogance and individualistic focus garnered American society’s attention. Modernism claimed to adhere to pure mathematical forms, with attempts at “urban renewal” demolishing historic structures to replace them with what are now considered to be bland and ahistorical boxes. As the rise of the automobile lead families to migrate into the suburbs, downtowns collapsed as strip-malls and corporate chains undermined the privately owned small businesses that previously made up the foundation of most American communities. One can readily engage with people and appreciate beautiful vistas on foot—but in a car, at 30 mph, pedestrians and communities become irrelevant. What matters at 30 mph is what you have and where you’re going; the in-between is irrelevant. American culture became, in the astute words of  Jean Baudrillard, “space, speed, cinema, technology.”

As communities broke down, and interpersonal relations diminished, television became the primary source of cultural dialogue—no longer the newspapers, no longer the markets, no longer the Main Streets. The medium, unfortunately, grew tainted by marketing and sensationalism, becoming increasingly inhuman. It generated what postmodernists refer to as a hyperreality, or an artificial reality readily mistaken for the actual one. The world outside the living room became less telling of the social and economic realities than the current CNN news stream.

Anything deemed unattractive or drab has been banished from broadcast—and this is why the working classes are essentially non-existent on television, despite it being intended namely for their consumption. Popular programs feature lawyers and doctors and chic urbanites but never basic factory employees of any respectable nature—only Homer Simpsons, only the simple-minded sports fans, only parodies. The epitome of this development? Perhaps the “Blue Collar Comedy Tour”—which makes self-deprecation a prideful act, if not a profitable pastime, for the working class. “Rednecks” are shown as being proudly ignorant and small-minded, their identities being subliminally associated with the symbols of camouflage clothing and dirtied trucks. Having been hammered with that image for decades now, it is safe to say that many in the rural working class have picked up and incorporated this manufactured character as their only defense against the alternative: nonexistence in the cultural dialogue at large.

Now, they wander about the downtowns their similarly-positioned ancestors built with worldly and forward-looking minds, unduly considering the classical embellishments as something above themselves. The working classes have become, in this sense, cultural aliens in the world of their own making. Camouflage t-shirts and NASCAR-branding clash heavily against the Doric and Corinthian orders with which their forefathers built up our communities.

By ELLE LUCAS

With finals closing in and sleepless nights in sight, most students aren’t thinking about the work they’ll be doing this summer. For some, however, internships are on the brain. For a select few, these internships will be with SLU alumni through the Shadow-a-Saint and Internship Fellowship programs offered through Career Services.

These two summer options provide students with the chance to gain valuable experience in the professional world with the comfort of working with another Laurentian. Available alumni that students have the chance to work with are volunteers, which shows that they are “truly Laurentians for life,” said Jillian McKernan-Walley ’93, Associate Director in Career Services. She spearheads the decades-old Shadow-a-Saint program that is available for first-years through seniors. “Designed to provide students the opportunity to explore different occupational interests,” students can apply to be matched with SLU alumni based on a field of interest or by location.

There are two internship options through Shadow-a-Saint: a 1-day shadow or a 5 day mini-internship as an extended shadow over the course of 1-2 weeks. Both offer the highly sought-after experience that more and more industries are requiring of college graduates. Both shadow options are offered over the winter and summer vacations.

Available internships through the growing program range from legal work to sustainability to education, covering a diverse range of jobs that give students a breadth of options to explore. Almost 70 alumni volunteers are selected based on their involvement in the SLU community, such as the Laurentian-in-Residence program and past involvement with Career Services.

Expenses for the shadows usually only require travel costs which must be covered by students. The Internship Fellowship program, on the other hand, covers all student costs to participate in an internship over the winter or summer vacations.

Funded completely by alumni, the Internship Fellowships essentially pay students to have an unpaid internship of choice. Unlike Shadow-a-Saint, which allows an unlimited number of attempts or received awards, the Internship Fellowships can only be applied to for a maximum of two times.  Emily McDonnell ‘01 is the Internship Coordinator in Career Services and recognizes “how important internships are and how many are unpaid,” and how exactly the Fellowship program alleviates the rising conundrum of hard work for no pay in order to have the experience or to expand one’s resume.

This past year has shown record numbers for both programs, and has done so every year since their inception. This winter saw 55 applicants for Shadow-a-Saint and 64 for the Internship Fellowship. Due to the finite funds available to students, approximately 25 can receive the Fellowship – the award amounts are varied but can be up to $2500.

Next fall there will be a presentation highlighting some of this summer’s internships including working in a senator’s office and even some abroad in South America and Africa. This is a great way to get the word out about this increasingly competitive opportunity from SLU, McDonnell said. She offers workshops to educate students about what exactly the application committee is looking for and how to perfect the chances of being accepted.

TWO INFO BOXES:

Shadow-A-Saint Program

• 1-day shadow with SLU alumni

• or, Mini-internship: extended shadow over 1-2 weeks with alumni

• All alumni are volunteers

Internship Fellowship Program

• Alumni-funded internship

• Any internship chosen by student

• Winter and summer offerings

St. Lawrence is home to many casual and competitive equestrians alike, but only a portion of them ride at the Elsa Gunnison Appleton Riding Hall. A handful of St. Lawrence students have found a home away from home for their horses and for themselves at Honey Dew Acres LLC, a boarding and lesson barn located just outside of Canton.

“Whether you’re just a trail rider, a dressage rider, an eventer, or a hunter jumper, Honey Dew is a good fit,” said Anne Martino ’15, who boards her horse Bijou at the farm. “It’s also nice because you have more opportunities to go trail riding and ride outside in general, as compared to the SLU barn. And best of all, the horses get awesome turnout!”

Honey Dew’s expansive facility includes two indoor riding rings, four outdoor rings, and two barns with heated tackrooms and bathrooms. The acres of turnout available are equipped with electric fencing and automatic waterers. Their trails and cross-country courses include banks, ditches, a water crossing and an assortment of permanent and transportable jumps.

“I think one of our biggest assets is that it’s a family environment,” says Tania Cambridge, the barn manager. “We try to make this a happy place, a place that people like to come and hang out and just be with their horse.”

Honey Dew Acres has an active pony club and a thriving lesson program with about 100 students a week. The farm also hosts competitions throughout the summer that range from dressage and hunter/jumper shows to events. The family-operated facility is home to four generations of Cambridges.

“We have anything you can ask for in an equine facility,” says Peggy McAdam-Cambridge, the farm manager and event organizer. “I think the boarders really appreciate being here and having all of these amenities we offer as well as an active social life within the barn.”

Elizabeth Billings ’13 has boarded her horse Snooze at Honey Dew during her senior year at St. Lawrence. “I think the barn is a good fit for college riders because of the relaxed and friendly atmosphere. It’s fun to be there and really provides relief from the stressful college environment,” she said. “I would recommend that students board at Honey Dew if they are looking for a low-stress facility with a friendly, casual, environment and many different things to do.”

College riders can take private lessons or group lessons with some of the other 24 students, who represent all four of the area’s local colleges, currently riding at Honey Dew. A group of nine riders formed a collegiate drill team that performed at the barn’s open house this spring. They spent weekends with Honey Dew’s head instructor, Emily Cambridge Carrier, learning and perfecting the choreographed routine.

“The barn provides that stability in the transition to college and it provides a network and base of support for students,” explained Cambridge. “When they’re new to campus and don’t know anybody, they can go to the barn and hang out with like-minded people.”

“It gives them a real break from being on campus and a good, healthy outlet,” added McAdam-Cambridge. The group of about 30 boarders is split evenly between college students and locals, so student boarders have the opportunity to connect with the North Country community in a way that they might not have otherwise been able to. Students are often able to carpool to the barn with faculty, staff, and students from St. Lawrence, and it’s even possible to bike to the barn.

“The thing I like most about HDA is that horses are allowed to be horses,” said Martino. “There are so many opportunities to go hack out in a field, the horses get all day turnout, and no horse is kept cooped up in a stall. HDA is by far the best option in the area to keep your horse.”

“We’re always growing. We’re always building,” says McAdam-Cambridge. “Honey Dew is a happy place: happy boarders, happy horses.”

By ELLE LUCAS

Of late, I’ve been tired. (Haven’t we all?) Tired of my wardrobe, tired of classes, tired of cloudy skies, and tired of my music. And what a better cure-all to all this fatigue than some new jams? Finding new music can be a challenge — do you go the hipster/indie/artsy route and find something no one’s ever heard of or do you dig deeper into the albums those top 40 hits are from? Either way, it’s time to move on from those iTunes playlist you made in high school that remind you of your love with Edward Cullen.

Pandora was the original way to get out of this slump by coining what’s now known as “internet radio,” a sensation sweeping the world wide web of music junkies of everywhere. The concept of a constant stream of music has been around for awhile, with older sites like Musicovery that uses a spectrum of colors to indicate emotion and the appropriate music to go with it. Streaming websites like Grooveshark, LastFM, and even MySpace (if that still counts) have revolutionized the way we listen to music. What once required a disc or at the very minimum an overpriced download from iTunes can now be accessed anytime and anywhere. When we’re not listening to music, we’re singing it in our heads, in the showers, or stumbling on the way home from the Ticker.  One of the newer radio streaming sites similar to Pandora is 8tracks, named after the now archaic cassettes your parents listened to.

Unlike Pandora, 8tracks doesn’t stream music similar to an artist or song. Though you can search for an artist or track, the website instead has thousands of playlists created by members to fit your mood. Feeling blue? That’s on there. Getting ready to workout? Got it. Looking for new sexy time music? Wait no more.

And isn’t that what music is all about? How it makes us feel? Since forever, music has been a way for us to express ourselves and to relate to the world in a beautiful way that we can share with others. 8tracks has allowed us to do just that with perfect compilations of tunes categorized by how we’re feeling or how we want to feel.

The site calls itself “handcrafted” internet radio, and it certainly is. The breadth of music is broader than anything I’ve ever explored and isn’t preprogrammed in any way, shape, or form. One playlist can lead to another of similar quality and style, or you can choose from the trending, featured, or newest playlists on the homepage to see what all the rage is about. If you become a member (it’s free to sign up!) you can create your own playlists, comment on others, favorite songs, and see all the playlists you’ve ever listened to: “the social alternative to Pandora,” according to Wikipedia. It’s a pretty cool place, needless to say.

Everything on the site is free and it doesn’t have commercials like Spotify and Pandora because all music is uploaded by users from their own personal collection. It’s also one hundred percent legal to listen so don’t ever feel like you’re pirating the night away.

What keeps bringing me back though is that I can always rely on getting out of this slump when I end up on the simple lay-out of 8tracks. Every playlist I’ve listened to has unknown songs and artists that give me an escape from the daily pop at the gym. What’s so great about this unfamiliar music is that I can actually do work as it hums in my ears – I’m not distracted by the same old lyrics I love and am compelled to sing along to. Instead I’ll tap my foot at the new sounds and bust out the essay in way less time than I would have  while simultaneously creating my own perfect study playlist or finding the next song to play on Youtube every four minutes. Hell, I’m listening to 8tracks as I write this column!

Granted, the names of playlists can be a little too cool for me, but I appreciate the music nonetheless. Here are some of my favorite mixes right now:

1. “Let’s Go Camping”

Seven hours of continual upbeat, folky, fresh sounding beats perfect for outdoor adventures or a summer drive

2. “this is what hipsters groove to.”

If you want to dance around to fun music like no one is watching, this one’s for you. Also, note the lack of capitalization and the period — like I said, too cool for me.

3. “Smell of mud and sound of guitar- Flamenco, Rumba and Arabic beats”

A little bit of spice, a little bit of sass, all Spanish.

These are just samplings of the overwhelming number of mixes available. So quit searching the depths of your iTunes or your friends’ Spotify playlists and try out 8tracks if you haven’t already. It’s already done all the work for you!

Now it’s time to sit back, crank out those flashcards, and listen to the music that will get you back on track and where you want to be.

Last Friday, April 26^th, around 4:45pm, you may have noticed a group of students running across campus stripping off their clothes. No, they were not day drinking. No, it wasn’t a dare. They were donating their clothes to charity!

Earlier that day, I made my way towards the circle in front of Lee Hall. I saw a small group of people gathered around a table with a pile of clothes on it, and I walked up and added a bag of my own clothes to the collection. I hadn’t planned to run in the event, but boy, was I proved wrong. Everyone was jumping with excitement and filled with such enthusiasm that in the next few minutes, I found myself putting on layers of clothing and calling over other students to come join us, regardless of whether they were donating clothing or not.

Soon, we were off. The race began outside of Lee and ended at Creasy Commons, the grassy area between ODY and Gunnison.  Morgan O’Hare won the race, and she decided to donate the clothes to the neighborhood center through the County Department of Health. When I asked Morgan about the race, she said “I had a great time running and being able to give back to the community in such a fun way!”

The FYC philanthropy club planned the run, and originally, they were unsure of where they wanted to donate the clothes. They knew of three different organizations in the area that they could potentially bring them to, and in the end, they decided to allow the winner of the race to choose where the clothes would end up. The committee chairs of the club are Meredith Santaus and Aaron Miska, and when asked about the race, Santaus said, “Considering how busy this time of year is, I think the run went really well. We had few people, but all of them came with enthusiasm and heaps of clothes. It would be great to establish the run as a sort of annual event!”

The race was a blast, and if the club does organize the event again next year, I highly suggest going through your closet and “spring cleaning.” You will appreciate it when you don’t have to struggle (as much) to fit all your belongings in the car for the drive home. You’ll also feel good knowing your clothes are going to someone who will get good use out of them, and you’ll have a fantastic time running across campus while literally stripping!

A line for pastured meat sausages winds between local farm stands and local business tables. The sun is shining, the breeze blowing and crowds of people walk from building to building, talking to the people they came with as well as the ones they’ve met. This is the scene presented at April 27^th’s Local Living Festival, which was hosted at the Cornell Cooperative Extension on Highway 68. The Festival included local vendors ( producing goods such as goat cheese and soap), local farmers with information about their CSA programs and farming practices, and over fifty workshops, presentations, and panels.

There really was something for everyone, including day-long children’s activities. Some of the highlights of the day were fermenting, cheese making, and herb garden workshops, talks on diet, local economy, and new farmers, and several speakers, including Elizabeth Henderson, founding member of NOFA  and one of the first farmers to use Community Supported Agriculture.

St. Lawrence students currently on the Sustainability Semester were present, along with posters (and in one case, a chicken coop) explaining their semester projects, which include beekeeping and planning an orchard.

The crowds were thick, the smiles wide, and the weather sublime. The festival is held every eighteenth months, meaning your next chance to connect with Canton’s vibrant community will be in the fall of 2014! Hope to see everyone there!

In writing my final editorial for The Hill News, I would like to reflect on the last four years and the most valuable lessons I’ve learned while at SLU. St. Lawrence is a place full of opportunities. Professors and staff members are willing and ready to help you at every turn, and this is something I didn’t necessarily take advantage of as a First-Year student. With graduation fast approaching, I would like to impart some advice that I wish I could’ve shared with my younger 18-year old self, entering St. Lawrence for the first time.
Many of us enter college carrying a certain level of self-doubt. My own self-confidence was tied to a lifelong commitment to a sport, and my ability to succeed in that sport. But after two serious knee surgeries, my enduring aspiration to compete in all four years of collegiate soccer came to an end my sophomore year. It wasn’t until after this moment that I was finally forced to explore other opportunities on campus—ultimately leading me to join The Hill News.
In retrospect, I think there are two reasons why I never took the initiative to join any other extracurricular activities before this point. First, I was already pretty busy, and second, because I questioned my ability to excel in something other than soccer. This is a problem I see many students face on this campus. Far too many students with the skills and potential to succeed as a campus leader fail to take advantage of the many opportunities to excel, primarily because of the risk involved in doing so. I know this because I experienced it. So, my first piece of advice is this: never question your ability to succeed in something that drives you. If there is a campus organization that interests you, sign up. It is often our own self-doubts and insecurities that prevent us from succeeding, because they prevent us from even trying.
With that said, I will follow my first piece of advice with my second: get involved, but don’t overextend yourself. Don’t be one of those kids who does 580 different extracurricular activities and runs 5 different organizations. You’re not going to have any fun. College is a time to take studies seriously, participate in some extracurricular activities to keep busy and build a resume, but it’s also a time to have fun. So be reasonable with what you can handle—I haven’t always been great at this, but it’s a lesson I’ve learned along the way.
The final piece of advice I’d like to leave you with is to learn to laugh at yourself and never take yourself too seriously. For those students like myself who put a lot of pressure on themselves to succeed: it is okay to mess up and make mistakes. I have embarrassed myself far too many times to count on this campus, and believe me, the only way I have survived is to mask the pure and utter horror of my often (very public) blunders by making myself the butt of a joke.
In closing, I would like to thank everyone at The Hill News for a wonderful year. I am fortunate to call many of my colleagues friends, and I know many of these bonds will last long after graduation.

Sincerely,

Laura Stewart ’13

Editor-in-Chief

THN: Can you give us a sneak preview of your speech at graduation next Sunday?
RWF: Absolutely. It’s an honor to be invited to St. Lawrence to deliver the commencement address and to celebrate the graduates of St. Lawrence University on their great accomplishments.
The Class of 2013 has the knowledge and skills our nation needs. College is about developing your human capital and I will make the case that the best way to honor your hard work and achievement is by committing to use your human capital to have an impact on the world.
Our nation desperately needs young adults to make this commitment – since they are uniquely qualified to help lead us to reach more solid ground in a time of great economic uncertainty and volatility.
I will also share some advice about building a career that can enable graduates to have a strong impact, as they embark on an exciting new chapter in their lives.

THN: What do you think are the biggest challenges facing today’s college graduates?
RWF: The truth is many Americans struggle with financial literacy.
Now more than ever graduates need an understanding of the concepts of personal finance, knowing how to use credit wisely, and having a long-term financial plan.
College students and graduates must take the time to educate themselves and direct some of their amazing brainpower to their financial lives. I urge young adults to make sure they give their financial life its due.
If you ignore the financial aspects of your life, your energy to make a difference will be severely diluted. You can’t really change the world if you’re worried about being unable to pay off credit card debt.
Financial education is very important to us at TIAA-CREF and helping make sure young people set long-term financial goals. If you start saving when you’re young, even just a little on a regular basis, you can have a huge impact on your financial well-being later in life.
I challenge young adults to commit to either becoming financially literate or to enhance the financial literacy skills they already have.

THN: What advice can you give college graduates on finding jobs in this competitive job market?
RWF: Earning a degree is not an extended preparation for a job search.  What a college degree is really about – and this is particularly true in regards to the advanced degrees you have earned – is developing your human capital.
St. Lawrence graduates have made a remarkable investment in their human capital and immeasurably boosted their competence, knowledge, and abilities.
I challenge you to figure out how to apply your human capital in a way that honors the best in you while maintaining a perspective broader than just your own self-interest.
Unemployment remains high but it’s starting to stabilize. And a degree gives graduates a strong advantage over their peers in the job market without one.
The class of 2013 is in an enviable position. Graduates today have the knowledge and skills our nation needs. Their education has taught them how to put their knowledge into practice to solve real-world problems and have successful careers.

THN: Through your career experience—working as attorney in New York City and as Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System—what is your greatest piece of advice on leadership?
RWF: The key to being an effective leader is inspiring others to follow you.  A true leader is someone that others want to follow and believe in.
I believe that there are four essential characteristics that inspire one person to follow another one.
·   Expertise: Whether you’re an engineering professor or a lawyer or an administrative assistant, you better have a rock-solid expertise about your discipline.
·   Appeal: People have to like you, not because you’re charming or everybody’s best friend – but because you display the characteristics that people want to see in their leaders.
·   Empathy: Effective leaders understand that the people they lead have lives outside of work. They have all kinds of responsibilities and demands on their time that have nothing to do with their work roles.
·   Finally, Fortitude: Effective leaders are the calm in the storm when there’s chaos and uncertainty, and they also stay grounded in the midst of euphoria. They are the shock absorbers of their organizations, tempering both the highs and the lows.
The truth is that good leadership is rarer than we’d like it to be. But when it’s there, amazing things can happen.

THN: Any exciting plans for the future?
RWF: At TIAA-CREF we are excited about our new program with the Council of Graduate Schools to improve debt management and financial literacy skills among graduate and undergraduate students.
Many students lack basic financial education skills to appropriately fund their college education and align it with a career path that will ultimately enable them to repay college loans.
We’ll be working with several universities, announced this summer, to develop the best practices. At the end of the three-year program CGS will publish a guide for every college and university in America.

Social networking has led us to gauge ourselves in a whole new perspective, as we sculpt and “market” our online personas with profiles pictures, personal descriptions, and status updates—proclaiming to the world where we eat, where we’ve been, and, at the most fundamental level, who we are. In-between, we feast vicariously on the exploits (and exaggerations) of peers both past and present, which in turn leads us to further augment our virtual appearances in a sort of keeping-up-with-the-Joneses-style progression. We consider our acquaintances, friends and coworkers as being part of personal “networks”—and we are told to work rigorously to expand our “networks” for additional business contacts and job opportunities, much akin to the way in which a sociopath befriends another for purely utilitarian reasons. Never before in human history have ordinary people had to analyze and project their lives to others in this manner, nor have we been forced to consider our relations to others in such a systematic, indirect way. While the Western world has always been more focused on the individual, it is safe to say that the individual has never been more consumed with himself than is now the case.

It concerns me, the effect that this self-focus may have on our overall perspectives. As full of anxieties about the future, and about our lives, as young people are, I hope this way of thinking is not distracting us from greater principles and greater purposes. I hope we are not becoming drunk on ourselves.  All too easily, we may slip contentedly within our own personal narratives–foregoing our responsibilities to those around us, and to world at large—for a greater level of personal comfort. It is all too easy to give in to the primal draw toward egotism at the expense of humility and humanity. With a lessening impact of dogma and religion on our generation, the traditional means of staying our ideological courses are disappearing, which perhaps is leading some to drift more easily from higher values. In many ways, we are traversing new waters in which it is all too easy to lose our bearings.

Studying at this University is a privilege. The resources available to us for intellectual and professional development are assets many millions in this country, and many billions on this planet, will go without. Amid our cultural environment of self-enhancement, what will you do with them? Will you take away something more than romanticized remembrances of self-medicating, alcohol-soaked weekends? Will you put the $200,000 investment to full use, or will you merely scrape by?  Will this be the “last hurrah,” or a new beginning? Will you use your education to build a better world, or to build up your net worth? In short, do you intend to serve yourself, or do you intend to serve others?  Hopefully, for most of us, the half-decade spent here will result in more than just an additional listing on a resume or profile, and more than just a means of making the “connection.” If it has its intended effect, its reach should extend far beyond our own lives.

“I really appreciate the opportunity to come back and see everybody,” said Unser, who explained that faculty here had always been supportive to her.  “I think professors at St. Lawrence are first class because they go out of their way to spend time with you and to make sure that what you do is exceptional.”

After graduating from St. Lawrence as a fine arts major, Unser went to Purdue University. At the beginning of her time there she changed her artistic style dramatically. She received such positive feedback from her faculty mentors that she felt trapped and unable to return to the style that she felt was more true to herself. However, after one of her mentors recommend that she read The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard, Unser became inspired to start drawing again.

For her thesis show, she created a large installation of drawings. She showed a series of them as individual works to the audience in the Brush Gallery last Thursday. She explained that her goal in the project was to fill images of cabinets or other domestic spaces with experiences and objects.

Unser describes her work as illustrative and, after her talk, she said, “I would call it etching-inspired, or engraving-inspired, and using elements of domestication in nature.”

The drawings featured drawers that held some expected objects, such as spoons, and some fanciful or even impossible things like rabbits. Drawings of hands, feet, and stars were scattered throughout the installation. Unser explained that she wanted to show a juxtaposition of sophisticated and childlike ideas.

She also included an actual dresser in her show. Each draw held either an object or a recorded stop-motion animation shown on a small screen. Unser showed two of the animations during her talk, one of which featured Chuck Taylor footprints appearing all over a blank page.

The second part of Unser’s talk touched on the challenges facing recent graduates who are attempting to work as artists. These range from having to reveal more through art than they are comfortable with to simply finding ways to make a living while doing what they are passionate about

Unser said that she worked as a tattoo artist out of necessity after graduation since she couldn’t find a better opportunity as an artist. Many of her representational tattoos were of birds.

Her next job, and one she is still involved in, was working with a friend on a graphic novel about organ harvesting and time travel. She is also currently re-drawing or re-painting Kim Kardashian’s Instagram feed, but is unsure of where she is planning to go with this project.

Unser is also applying to PhD programs to further her studies, especially in the development of fear psychology in children and how it relates to unfilled spaces like those featured in her drawings.

Her advice to the audiences was to be a person first and an artist second. She explained that living a life that was not solely consumed by art gave her richer material to work with.

She also had advice to give to St. Lawrence students and said, “The St. Lawrence community is kind of unique in that Laurentians go out of their way to help each other out, and don’t hesitate to use those contacts. They’re being given to you for a reason. If someone gives you their card and says, ‘Call me,’ then do it.”