A high school history teacher in Vernal, Utah, Linda plans to spend a month this spring traveling down the East Coast to visit living history museums from Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts to the tobacco plantations in North Carolina. Her program focuses in American Studies, concentrating on the cultural history of the Colonial and Early Republican period.

I love research, partly because it keeps teaching me how much I still don’t know. Someone said that being educated is not about having all the answers—it’s knowing how to find them. That’s one of the most powerful lessons Skidmore has taught me: how to find answers to the questions I care about. I’ve already written a book on my own, but I wrote it the old-fashioned way. With all I’ve been learning recently about the kinds of electronic databases that are available, I’m feeling much more adventurous. I just called the library at the North Carolina State Archives to find out more about the wedding record of Benjamin Hawkins, a man who pays a central role in the second edition of my book, James and Elizabeth Allred.

When I came to campus for the introductory seminar, I could hardly believe that John Cosgrove remembered who I was each time I went into the library. He’d make personalized recommendations for books to read, or point me to where I could find a certain kind of information, or help me figure out how I could borrow a scanner. He even found a carrel where I could lock up my computer and all the books I’m working with—so I didn’t have to carry them around with me all the time. Even the Skidmore undergraduates have been so sweet—they’re always opening the door for me! And my faculty advisors are great: the first time I met with Mary , she called over to Susan Lehr in the Education Department, and the next thing I knew we were talking about how you could use children’s novels to teach history. Before I came to Skidmore, I’d never dreamed that I might continue on for my Ph.D. But my advisors here keep telling me to start looking into doctoral programs.

There’s something wonderful about the close attention I’ve received here. But it doesn’t feel as though everything’s being done for me—not at all. In this program, you have to take your own initiative: the faculty and advisors are there to help, but you’ve got to move forward on your own plan. That’s perfect for me: I need help figuring out where I need to go, but once I know, I won’t stop till I get there.