“For me, a St. Olaf education was both a gentle and challenging ushering into a useful and moral adulthood. The challenging part was to maintain the grades. Not being the sharpest, that one goal impressed on me the overarching need to learn, all the time and everywhere. Doing that within the structure of a relatively small institution where lifelong friendships developed provided me the means to manage much bigger and much more impersonal constructs. So that’s what I am thanking St. Olaf for. It’s not sentimental or maudlin. It’s essential.”David Carlson ’66

“I signed up for Intro to Sociology because it sounded interesting. This course changed the trajectory of my life. I discovered my passion for social justice through the sociology/anthropology major, and this led to my first job out of college (which led to my second, and to grad school, and so on). I am now managing a program called Health Care for the Homeless for Hennepin County, and focusing entirely on health equity and social justice. At St. Olaf, I learned that all of humanity is connected. Our liberty and freedom and well-being are all bound up in one another.”Morgan Smith ’12