Tag Archives: Princeternships

Anna Powell ’13, Landon School

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This Jan­u­ary, I had the plea­sure to spend three days at the Lan­don School, a boys school in D.C., with David Arm­strong ‘70. This Cot­tage Club alum­nus and fel­low His­tory con­cen­tra­tor wel­comed me to his sprawl­ing cam­pus in Bethesda, offer­ing me a packed sched­ule. I spent a day in each school divi­sion – lower (3-5th), mid­dle (6-8th), and upper (9-12th). Each day meant the oppor­tu­nity to sit in on a class or two, which Mr. Armstrong’s assis­tant Patti gen­er­ously arranged to be of the his­tor­i­cal per­sua­sion. I got to observe what it means to “know boys” the way only a top-notch school like Lan­don can. Hop­ing to max­i­mize the value of the expe­ri­ence, I kept a note­book with me – a size­able por­tion of which is now filled with obser­va­tions and “notes to self” about work­ing at an edu­ca­tional institution. 

Not only was I able to see the teach­ers in action, but I also got to sit down with them and hear about their career paths. Many took sur­pris­ing turns, but all of them con­cluded with sat­is­fac­tion at Lan­don. The boys I met shared this same pos­i­tive atti­tude. Those I met were well dressed, well man­nered, and respect­ful. At the request of a teacher, a fourth grade boy walked me to class. On the way, he gal­lantly asked, “How has your expe­ri­ence at Lan­don been so far?” The matu­rity and sin­cer­ity of the ques­tion com­pletely caught me off guard, but I assured him that I was very pleased with every­thing and everyone.

I spent a part of each day with the music depart­ment. My father grew up in D.C., so I had heard of Lan­don before – gen­er­ally as a strong com­peti­tor in ath­let­ics. I did not expect to find the real gem of the school to be its music pro­gram, but at the end of the first after­noon, it was unmis­tak­able. Run by the vet­eran musi­cian Earl Jack­son and his crew of geniuses, the band, orches­tra, choir, and hand bell classes were beyond impres­sive. I found myself envy­ing even the lower school boys for their luck in study­ing music at Landon.

David Arm­strong and Anna

Mr. Arm­strong took me to impor­tant meet­ings which fell dur­ing my visit, includ­ing a cal­en­dar meet­ing, a devel­op­ment meet­ing, and a big pic­ture meet­ing for divi­sion heads. By the end of my three days, I felt I had an insider’s view into the indi­vid­ual parts of a qual­ity inde­pen­dent school – as well as their sum. I learned so much about the pri­vate school envi­ron­ment. I can now actu­ally pic­ture apply­ing for jobs in edu­ca­tion and even­tu­ally tak­ing one, an idea which before seemed hope­lessly abstract. If this Princetern­ship comes up again, I whole­heart­edly rec­om­mend it. I could not have had a warmer recep­tion or a more use­ful set of expe­ri­ences. Mr. Arm­strong and his crew were fab­u­lous hosts, and I could not be more pleased with my Intercession.

Lauren Davis ’14, Boston University School of Law

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Day One:

The three of us, me and my fel­low Princeterns, arrived in Pro­fes­sor Fleming’s office at 9 am, and had a chance to hear the full account of how he came to be a Law Pro­fes­sor, from col­lege to the present day. We shared our var­i­ous aca­d­e­mic inter­ests with him, and Pro­fes­sor Flem­ing in turn set up a vari­ety of appoint­ments with other BU Law pro­fes­sors whose work over­lapped with our inter­ests. At 10 am, one of his stu­dents came in to talk about an upcom­ing paper on Con­sti­tu­tional the­ory, as well as to update Pro­fes­sor Flem­ing on the duties she had com­pleted as his research assis­tant for his upcom­ing book. This meet­ing touched upon three of Pro­fes­sor Fleming’s roles at BU Law — a pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tional Law (a first year class) and Con­sti­tu­tional The­ory (an upper level sem­i­nar), an author of esteemed aca­d­e­mic lit­er­a­ture (his most recent book is about to go to press, and was co-authored by his wife Linda McClain, who is also a pro­fes­sor at BU), and the fac­ulty advi­sor for the BU Law Review. After this meet­ing, we got the chance to meet two pro­fes­sors spe­cial­iz­ing in Health Law and Inter­na­tional Law. Finally, at 2 pm we headed to Pro­fes­sor Fleming’s two hour lec­ture on Con­sti­tu­tional Law.

Day Two:

Dr. Flem­ing and his Princeterns

 

We started the day with another meet­ing between Pro­fes­sor Flem­ing and oneof his students/research assis­tants. After this, we sat in on his meet­ing with the Dean of BU Law, get­ting the chance to see how a law school works from the admin­is­tra­tion side, such as con­ver­sa­tions about how to give fund­ing to pro­fes­sors for research, the topic for the next big col­lo­quium Pro­fes­sor Flem­ing is orga­niz­ing, main­tain­ing a bal­ance between a the­o­ret­i­cal and a prac­ti­cal law edu­ca­tion, and select­ing new pro­fes­sors for tenure. We ate lunch at a fac­ulty paper work­shop where a vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor pre­sented his paper on the applic­a­bil­ity of for­eign laws in the U.S., and after­wards took ques­tions and feed­back from his col­leagues. We ended the day by sit­ting in on Pro­fes­sor Fleming’s sec­ond class — his upper level Con­sti­tu­tional The­ory sem­i­nar. Thank you Pro­fes­sor Flem­ing for being such a ded­i­cated host and giv­ing us a fas­ci­nat­ing two day oppor­tu­nity to glimpse the life of a law pro­fes­sor! I really was able to put myself in the shoes of a law stu­dent and get expo­sure to a vari­ety of top­ics within the aca­d­e­mic branch of law.

 

Amanda Chen ’13, Sovatsky Counseling and Yogic Research

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I arrived at the office of Dr. Stu­art Sovatsky ’71 in Rich­mond, CA thirty min­utes too early and unsure of what to expect.  But Dr. Sovatsky greeted me warmly, and we chat­ted about Prince­ton life while we waited for my fel­low Princetern, Michele Tyler.  After Michele arrived, Dr. Sovatsky told us more about his back­ground, his work in the U.S. and in Rus­sia, and what the sched­ule of events would be for that day.  Michele and I had also never met before, so in the process of telling Dr. Sovatsky about our­selves, we also learned about each other.

Dr. Sovatsky’s pri­vate prac­tice is cen­tered on rela­tion­ship coun­sel­ing and yoga coun­sel­ing, and we were lucky enough to expe­ri­ence both ther­a­pies first­hand.  Dr. Sovatsky had arranged for a cou­ple he had been see­ing for a year to come and talk to us at 11 am.  The cou­ple we met was extremely friendly, and we got to hear the story of their rela­tion­ship and how they found Dr. Sovatsky.  They had gone through rough times and told us about the tech­niques that Dr. Sovatsky had used to help them over­come their dif­fi­cul­ties.  I found their story very mov­ing and was tear­ing up by the time they left.

After lunch, Dr. Sovatsky’s intern, Andrew, came by with his daugh­ter to share his expe­ri­ences with us.  It was really infor­ma­tive to hear from both Andrew and Dr. Sovatsky about the dif­fer­ent degree pro­grams and processes needed to become a ther­a­pist.  They helped me fig­ure out what path I wanted to pur­sue to reach my goal of being both a researcher and ther­a­pist.  Also, they shared with us how a pri­vate prac­tice was set up, what it was like to run a pri­vate prac­tice, and how dif­fer­ent patients would respond bet­ter to dif­fer­ent ther­a­pies.  Andrew’s adorable young daugh­ter was with him, and he told us that run­ning a pri­vate prac­tice gave him more flex­i­ble hours to take care of her.

Amanda, Dr. Sovatsky, and fel­low Princetern Michelle

Dr. Sovatsky told us of his other coun­sel­ing work beforehe focused on rela­tion­ship coun­sel­ing, and we got to hear anec­dotes about for­mer patients.  As the day drew to a close, Dr. Sovatsky talked to us about his yogic research.  He played an Indian musi­cal instru­ment for us that facil­i­tates energy flow and was very calm­ing.  We talked about how spir­i­tual awak­en­ing is impor­tant in his coun­sel­ing, and by the end of the day, I felt enlightened.

I am very grate­ful to have had this oppor­tu­nity to meet with Dr. Sovatsky, the cou­ple that he is help­ing, and Andrew.  Even though the Princetern­ship lasted only a day, I felt like I learned a lot about this career field, and I would def­i­nitely rec­om­mend this Princetern­ship to other students.