Alli Shea ’13 was accidentally trespassing on an alumna’s tennis court when she first heard of St. Lawrence. “I didn’t get in trouble,” she says. Instead, “I was surprised to be invited for an afternoon of waterskiing with the alumna’s family!”

She didn’t go to prison that time, but after enrolling at St. Lawrence Alli did wind up learning alongside the incarcerated as part of a Life/Sentences creative writing class. “Jail was pretty challenging,” the New Hyde Park, N.Y., native says of the weekly classes, conducted in an area prison as part of her English minor. “It was invaluable to put myself in the real world and outside my comfort zone and to learn from some often-overlooked members of the upstate New York community,” she says.

A St. Lawrence off-campus program again put Alli outside her comfort zone, this time in the mountains of New Zealand. Five months of successful travel with other St. Lawrence students “made me really proud to be a Laurentian,” she says. “After returning to campus, I realized that the program gave me a new appreciation for Canton and a real sense of place here.”

Alli’s experience with the Thelomathesian Society (Thelmo), the St. Lawrence student government, has further cemented her sense of place at St. Lawrence. Involved since her first year, Alli has served as a senator, the student life chair and for a year as vice president of Senate affairs. Alli’s work with Thelmo has shown her how to be “a lot more professional and articulate when speaking for a group,” a skill she hones daily in classes for her performance and communication arts major.

The Herricks High School graduate is confident her years at St. Lawrence will serve her well after graduation in May. “Wherever I head, above all else SLU has taught me how to learn,” she says.

-Molly Lunn ’12