Duke University | Baldwin Scholars Program
Nancy McKinstry
Hi everyone,
Thanks so much for looking at the website! I have really enjoyed being in Baldwin for the past year. It has been a wonderful way for me to get to know many Duke women who I otherwise may never have met. What I love most about Baldwin is that though we are all passionate people, our backgrounds and interests are incredibly varied. Throughout life I am always dismayed with how easy it is for me to fall into a routine of spending time with people whose interests align with mine. Baldwin is wonderful because we are similar in the sense that we are all motivated and engaged people, but each of us contributes a set of experiences and ideas which the rest of us are able to learn from. The multitude of perspectives and ideas that we share allow us each to establish more educated and complex understandings of how we approach our lives academically, socially and personally.
My first year at Duke blew past me, but overall it was wonderful. The year has given me a lot of new academic interests, and I am still sorting all of them out. I live on a farm in Lexington, Kentucky, and I went to high school in a small town in Southern New Hampshire. Living in both of these places has given me a strong passion for all things relating to the environment, particularly New England forests and birds, and when I got to Duke I thought that I wanted to study environmental science. After a year at Duke, my perspectives have changed, and my growing interests in international human rights as well as in children and the US school system have forced me to rethink what I will study at Duke. So, even though I do not know exactly where Duke is taking me, I am excited about all that will happen in the next three years.