As Goshen College seniors prepare for graduation, many wonder where their peers will end up living in the coming year.
For some graduates, it won’t be very far: nearly a quarter of the current graduating class plans to stay in Goshen next year, according to a recent online poll conducted by The Record.
For others, the journey is farther. Half of the graduating class plans to live out-of-state, while an additional 9 percent will go out of the country.
Though the common perception might be that students are unsure about the future, only 7 percent of 97 respondents said they don't know where they'll be living after graduation. 82 percent of respondents plan to be either working (59%) or doing voluntary service work (23%).
One student who plans to do service work is Laurel Woodward, who will be entering a year of Mennonite Voluntary Service (MVS) in Alamosa, Colo. She will be helping with mediation and restorative justice work at the Center for Restorative Programs. Another student doing domestic service is Abbie Miller, who will be moving to Pittsburgh to participate in the Pittsburgh Urban Leadership Service Experience (PULSE) program, which is an 11-month commitment to help with non-profit service work in the city.
Other students are heading overseas for voluntary service.
Matthew Amstutz will be moving to China, where he will teach English to Chinese undergraduate students in the Sichuan Province for three years.
Melissa Zehr is headed to Kiambu, Kenya in late August, for an 11 month term with the SALT (Serving and Learning Together) program. There, she will be a math and science teaching assistant at a high school.
Mohamed Yarba will be going home to Mauritania for a month or so before returning to the U.S. to pursue a master’s degree in African Studies and Political Science at Ohio University.
Many students have already secured jobs for the summer and beyond. Kelsey Morris will be a morning show co-host for a country music station near Indianapolis. Working for Indiana County 101.5 WKKG is exactly the type of job Morris desired. “It really couldn’t get much better for a radio student coming right out of college.”
Benjamin Kelly has taken a job in Schaumburg, Illinois, where he will be a sports broadcaster, calling games for the Schaumburg Boomers – an independent professional baseball team in the Frontier League.
Some others who will be working are Emma Brooks, who has secured an unpaid internship with an online business that designs album covers for artists on iTunes; Billy Funk, who will be working in Goshen at Bashor Children’s Home this summer; and Aaron Shelly, who be researching in the Maple Scholars program this summer, and then will head to Oregon to “live off the land.” By this, Shelly said that he means to find a job that pays the rent during his gap year before graduate school.
208 graduating seniors were invited via email to participate in The Record poll. Ninety-seven students (47 percent) answered the survey.
