Mackenzie Cushman will soon start living “a dream come true.”
The recent Belmont High School graduate will be flying around the world for the next four years – living in Virginia for the first, on the east cost of Scotland for the next two and then back to Virginia again for the fourth.
And, at the end of all that travel, she will receive two bachelor of arts degrees: one from the College of William and Mary and the second from the University of St. Andrews.
Cushman will be studying history and loves the fact that she will be “living through the history” she’ll be reading about while in attendance at both schools.
William and Mary, located in Williamsburg, was founded in 1693 by a royal charter issued by King William III and Queen Mary II. There’s a dispute, Cushman pointed out, that the college might even be older than Harvard University that currently claims the status.
It’s a fact, however, that St Andrews, located in Fife County, is Scotland’s first university and the third oldest in the English-speaking world having been founded in 1413.
Those dates hugely appeal to Cushman who loves European history.
For years, she explained, the two schools traded back and forth to offer their students a junior year abroad and recently established the curriculum for a BA from both.
Originally, Cushman had her heart set on attending the University of North Carolina.
“It’s so beautiful, so southern and fun to see a large and spirited community rather than a small New England college,” she said. “I thought the change would be great for four years.”
But Cushman didn’t get in to UNC and was disappointed for a while.
Then, she “fell in love” with William and Mary when she went to visit the school and was delighted to discover it offered a joint program with St. Andrews for the dual degrees.
It’s such an ideal plan that Cushman feels the program was made just for her.
There’s an additional application essay required to get into the dual program and students must declare they’ll pursue one of four majors: history, economics, English and international relations.
It’s a competitive program to which only 20 students were accepted this year.
Cushman received two letters from William and Mary; one alerting her she was accepted to the college and the other congratulating her on getting into the dual program with St. Andrews.
“They said they liked my essay that I wrote on being a teacher,” she said, describing how much she began to love the topic after taking American History her sophomore year with Adam Zilcoski and Advanced Placement European History this year with Deborah McDevitt.
“Up until eighth grade, I hated history,” Cushman said.
Now, she reads it on a regular basis.
“Since being accepted to William and Mary I’ve been reading more US history, particularly about the Civil War era,” Cushman said.
And, like everyone else who reads a newspaper or watches television, she’s seen quite a few special programs on St. Andrews since the royal wedding in April as both the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge – that would be Prince William and Catherine Middleton – attended the university.
Cushman said she is leaning toward becoming a history teacher some day.
“I think that’s because I love the topic and had such excellent teachers who had a profound affect on me,” she said.
Ever since her confirmation two years ago, Cushman has been teaching Sunday school to first graders at St. Joseph’s Church and thoroughly enjoys it.
So she’s hoping to share her love of history with older students some day.
The job market, however, concerns Cushman a bit.
“I’m independent and don’t want to be in a position to have to move back home in four years,” she said.
But, despite dire predictions about the economy and unemployment rate in a number of professions, Cushman is still optimistic about her future in academia.
“I won’t mind having a job I don’t love for a while until I get the one I do,” she said. “I know it will all work out because I will make sure it does.”
After all, Cushman points out, she’s been extremely well prepared by the Belmont schools.
“It’s a great system and the high school is excellent,” she said. “Dr. Harvey is the best, the teachers are fantastic and we had such a large array of classes.”
One of her best teachers was Brian Dunn with whom she studied Latin.
But the start of Cushman’s final year at Belmont High did not begin well.
She had been sick and was out of school for almost a month in the fall.
Even when she returned, Cushman still felt “weak, disoriented and behind.”
What worried her the most was how she would compete her senior thesis.
“It was extremely stressful for me but then I talked to Dr. Harvey who – with Lindsey Rinder (head of the English department) and Tracie Santiago (her English teacher) – helped me work it through,” Cushman said.
She can now look back with relief that she was able to successfully plan and complete her thesis that she wrote on James Joyce and Charles Dickens and the way both writers used setting as characters within their novels.
If there’s one thing that Cushman will miss when she leaves for Virginia in the fall, it’s the people she has been close to her entire life.
“We have a large extended family who I see all the time,” she said. “I will miss them and my friends a lot but look forward to seeing them on holidays and during the summers.”
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