When Sarah Rothmann ’19 arrived at Bates from Andover, Mass., she had three goals: good grades, fast times in cross country and track, and, by graduation, a job.
“I just didn’t want to take any risks,” she recalls. But as one semester led to the next, “I learned to step beyond” those initial goals. Way beyond, it turns out.
By senior year, Rothmann was editor of The Bates Student while also serving as co-captain of her cross country and track and field teams. An English major, she completed an honors thesis on the autobiographic fiction of Charles Dickens.
Video by Theophil Syslo
A minor in education studies with experience in local schools, she discovered a connection between teaching and journalism that had eluded her.
“I thought it was an either/or,” she says of her interest in the two fields. “But I’ve learned that they blend very nicely.” As editor, she’s “almost assumed the role of a teacher to help my writers navigate a path.”
As for that job? She recently accepted a Fulbright Student award to teach English in the Czech Republic in 2019–20.
