Roads Taken

Welcome to Roads Taken, the show that reminds us that you don’t have to know exactly where you’re going, you just need to be open to the adventure that awaits. Each Monday we release another episode in which a classmate from Dartmouth’s Class of ’96 sits down with host Leslie Jennings Rowley to share their stories about who they were in college, who they thought they’d be, and how they’ve meandere...

Guest Dan Gonzalez left college most concerned with keeping his options open. In the pursuit of breadth, he dabbled in everything from health care consulting and after-school drama programs for kids, and even considered med school.  But then he heeded the oft-proffered advice to "follow your passion," realized music-making had been a source of earlier joy, and enrolled in a song-writing program at...

Guest  Shuhei Sekiguchi  had moved halfway around the world to attend college in the Northeast U.S., having been raised in Japan. Though he came from a family steeped in the health professions, he took an interest through internships in advertising and found his first job in that field upon graduation. Not fulfilled by having clients inexplicably shooting down ideas, he found work in sales at an e...

Guest  Doug Asano  had always had a fascination with Wall Street and could envision himself there.  In the middle of sophomore year, the impetus to get a job there became less theoretical and more practical when his father said that Doug would need to pay the rest of his way through college. With an upperclass mentor already working in investment banking, he was able to get internships at prestigi...

Guest  Elizabeth Manheim Ades  had known medical school was in her future but decided to take advantage of a liberal arts education and major in history. A senior year course on topics and ethics in assisted reproduction and a related research project solidified that a life in medicine—specifically IVF—would be hers. So when a first attempt at med school admission didn’t work in her favor, she sou...

Guest  Holly Parker  went to college knowing she’d be an English major and a squash player and stumbled upon a passion for the environment and sustainability. She graduated with the thought of being a journalist and tried her hand at it at a boating publication. Though she didn’t want to turn into her mother—a teacher—she did have a small itch to try teaching. What she thought would be a short sti...

Guest  Kishan Putta —who boldly introduced himself to everyone the first week of college as Kishan, like fishin’ —always knew a life of public service would suit him. His parents both immigrants from small villages in India, worked for the state of New York, his mother in biology and his father as an engineer in environmental issues. To Kishan it just made sense to want to give back. But he was un...

Guest  Christy Hansel Lohof  grew up on a dairy farm in upstate New York, attendant with all the feed and milking duties. Her parents were sure to leave time for other activities such as competitive sports, which Christy continued in college. With a biology major and geology minor, she left college without a clear picture of what was to come next, assuming that she would go to veterinary school. A...

Guest  Jorge Motoshige  felt as though college surrounded him with an interesting, diverse group of people that helped him land in a number of different places with some comfort, because he didn't have any concerns about being able to get out there and meeting new people of all kinds of different backgrounds. Get out there, he did, becoming employee number 113 at Yahoo upon graduation. After a num...

Guest  Jennie Tranter  decided to try on a new persona in college and be more outgoing and social than she’d been previously. Academically, having desired to be a doctor, she loaded on the science classes. She took a religion course to fill a distributive requirement and was completely taken by the idea that, unlike in science, there may not be just one right answer and she may have to become more...

Guest  Mary Romano  was sure she wanted to be a doctor. But she really loved Latin and Greek and didn’t want to give up everything for her medical dreams too soon. So she majored in the classics and stayed on the pre-Med track. When others were getting into medical schools—or letting their med school dreams go, Mary did neither. Without a place to land, she went back home and regrouped. She ultima...

Guest  Erika Meitner  was raised in a household where reformed Judaism revolved around justice and social action. As a first-generation American, her immigrant parents expected her to go into a medical career or something established. Raised with an eye toward social justice and a voice to say something about it, though, she was drawn to both the arts—particularly creative writing—and religious st...

Guest Ken Lee had not really thought he would be a lawyer; he went to law school as a means for kicking life’s decision-making down the road. After a summer job at the Attorney General’s office in Boston and a course of study that pointed him to litigation, he had a couple of views of paths he could take. He started in litigation at a number of firms but found, over time, that he didn’t find much...

Guest Morgan Flatley had a job in non-profit consulting after college, but felt motivated more by seeing the female owner run her own small business than the content itself. After traveling a bit and taking personality inventories from her parents’ home, she realized that she loves being around people and ideating creative solutions. This led her to the advertising world, business school, and a ca...

Guest Shawn Snipes Gasparini loved science and thought she would be a pediatrian so that she could be a role model for other kids with diabetes or kids of color. But when she started taking electives in English and film studies, she knew she was pursuing medicine for people other than herself. She changed her major at the end of junior year and left college bound for NYU film school. She deferred...

Guest Karen M. Smith DeBolt always rocked a put-together look—an important expression of her cultural and individual motto “Dress well, test well.” As her Colombian mother had made clear, in looking the part you could eventually feel the part. This was key for Karen who didn’t really feel as though Dartmouth was the right choice for her until she met her tribe of women friends sophomore year who s...

Guest Mariya Rosberg felt as though she had lived a somewhat sheltered beginning of life. At college, she leaned into everything that could expand her world, from languages to travel and found herself particularly drawn to ideas around gender equity. She married classwork in gender studies with real-world applications both on campus and abroad. She always felt the pull to adventure and believed sh...

Guest Adam Wollowick figured he would go to medical school but also brought a love of art history with him from high school. He took on an art history major along with his pre-med classes and bounced from fraternity basement to library, living the “work hard, play hard” ethos. With a father in orthopedics, he followed in that practice when he realized he liked working with his hands and selected s...

Had Dartmouth offered a course of study in architecture, guest Julie Kline Dixon  may have taken it. At an early age, she would cover her school notes with sketches of floor plans and seemed drawn to the field. She had sat through one day of the sole architecture course she saw offered, but dropped the course when she realized it was mostly focused on the structure of bridges and that didn’t appea...

Guest Soraya O’Brien Jollon started her career in management consulting but realized that there were elements of corporate life that didn’t suit her. She also realized that she wanted to do something that made people happy and she was also a bit of a control freak. Enter event planning. She found she liked all the things that make most people panic, dealing with other people's emotions and with th...

Guest Kate Kelly had grown up thinking about herself as an athlete. But she also was someone who sought out joy in all aspects of her life. She liked being around kids, so figured she would be an educator. But something whispered to her that educating kids wasn’t all about being in the classroom. She started working in admissions and coaching at an independent school in Massachusetts but wished sh...

Guest Tim Chow took a long time to make peace with who he was. As a closeted gay man in the mid-nineties—not a particularly open time—his college rah-rah spirit masked a feeling of not living authentically in his skin. He found pockets of interest, tucking himself away in the small Italian department, often working one-on-one with his professors, and studying abroad. But when he left college he st...

Guest K.C. Danzansky could barely believe that one could make a major by reading classic literature, analyzing it, and writing about it. She considered her English major not only fun but a good grounding in the liberal arts that would prove useful in a career. But because she loved the literary world, she figured she would remain in it, working at a publishing house or something similar. The famou...

Guest  Kate Shanahan , Dartmouth ’96, had grown up in Hanover in her elementary years and searched for colleges elsewhere. But nothing compared to the College on the Hill and so returned to rediscover the campus she knew so well. It took her time to find her groove but English literature lit a spark for her. Later, she found the Education department and the encounters she had there with professors...

Guest  Ryan Donovan , Dartmouth ’96, felt as though his priorities were running, drinking, and studying in that order. But a guest speaker in a course on Sport and Society opened his eyes to how a government major might be able to marry his love of sport and a career. Dick Dunham ’53 talked about his career working with the U.S. Olympic Committee and Ryan reached out for some mentoring and a recom...