Diana Shaghayegh Sepehri, from Gold River, California, and Iran – “At Bates, I was given the opportunity and the helping hands to do anything I wanted to. As long as I put the effort in, there was a path and there was a support. I was able to go abroad, to Ecuador for a semester, and there I established contacts to be able to develop a project. And I got a Phillips Fellowship and various other complementary grants to do research in traditional medicine last summer in Latin America. And now I’m off to do a year on a Watson Fellowship in four different regions of the world. I’m doing what I love to do, and I do owe it, lots of it, to Bates, to the community, to my friends, to the administration, and to the professors for believing in me. And I know although this chapter is ending, there are seeds that I have in the ground with everyone and connections that, at a given point, will flower. And that flower is going to be beautiful.”