Hi All!

Hi All! I’m Meg Sumner-Moore and I’m from a small town in the San Francisco Bay Area. I would say that my education started at church camp during my middle school summers. That’s where I started to learn more about the world and living a meaningful and compassionate life in this crazy world of ours. My education definitely continued in middle and high school, when I attended a school that was founded by hippies in the 1960s. My high school has more of a “whole person” approach to education. In addition to preparing students for college, the curriculum also focused on unconventional subjects, such as outdoor adventure, environmental stewardship, and international and multicultural understanding. The classroom environment was also a bit different from other high schools in that we called every faculty member by their first name, students were very involved with the direction that the class went during the semester, and we had seminar subjects from the likes of “Queer Studies,” and “Women’s Literature” to “The Holocaust,” and “Buddhist Philosophy”. As much as I loved (and still love) school, I was burned out when I graduated in 2010 so I decided to take a year off school. I lived and volunteered in South Africa during the fall and spent most of my spring helping take care of my grandparents who were recovering from surgeries. While in South Africa, I learned so much, not just about a culture vastly different from my own, but also about my self. I am very excited about being back in school, even though it feels very strange to be in classes and doing homework, and I am very happy to be continuing my education at Bryn Mawr.

During our first class, I was very happy to learn that this seminar is driven by student discussion and interest, and less about the teacher talking to us – although I’m very excited to learn from Anne! I became interested in education in a roundabout way. I’ve wanted to go into medicine for years and that is still my plan however, I’ve also always wanted to focus on more than the natural sciences. For me, practicing medicine is more about looking at the whole person and not just at one particular symptom or illness. To me, the whole person also includes one’s culture, upbringing, beliefs, et cetera. I’ve come to realize that education is a huge issue worldwide and I hope that I’ll be better able to discern whether I have a huge interest or a small interest in education after this course. I think it would amazing if I were able to one day help bring medical care AND educational resources to an area in the world without much of either in order to help raise up a community.