For Kanti Shrestha ’07, St. Lawrence has
been all about new experiences. Kanti, who is from Nepal and
graduated from St. Xavier’s College in Kathmandu, has taken
advantage of the many traveling opportunities St. Lawrence
offers its students. “You learn the most when
you travel,” she says. “Every place has a unique
culture. Traveling helps you grow as a person as you begin to understand
the different cultures and people.”
Kanti has learned a lot through her travels, which include studying
abroad in Denmark during Fall 2005, and
receiving a grant from the Asian Studies Initiative to travel
to Bangkok in Winter 2004 to do research for her project “AIDS
Hospice in the Slums of Bangkok: An Attempt at Humanizing the AIDS
Patients.” She also received a travel enrichment
grant from the Center for International and Intercultural
Studies to spend a week in Paris, France.
Kanti spent summer 2005 in Canton working with her sociology professor,
Dr. Abye Assefa, as part of the SLU Fellowship Program. Her
project, titled “Gender in the Making of Modern India” focused
on the social construction, gender issues, and history of India.
For Kanti, the experience was about more than just the research. “Working
with Dr. Assefa was great. I learned so much from his
expertise. It was a whole new experience for me.”
When she’s not busy flying across the oceans to her many destinations,
Kanti, who is double majoring in economics and sociology and
completing a minor in statistics, participates in Amnesty International,
International House activities and the South Asian Student Association. She
also finds time to work at the Language Resource Center and
in the Interlibrary Loan at Owen D. Young Library.
