One of our favorite things about Remarkable Life Memoirs is the close connections we get to build with our coworkers. So we’re starting a new blog series showing you fun tidbits of what’s happening behind the scenes here! Up first is an interview with our newest team member, Hannah Young. Hannah is a brand-new graduate of Hamilton College and is looking forward to managing social media at RLM.
How’s post-grad life treating you?
Well, I definitely wasn’t expecting to graduate into a pandemic! I Zoom with my friends on a fairly regular basis, and Hamilton actually did a virtual commencement for us last week. Eating bagels on my couch while receiving my diploma was not what I pictured when I thought about graduation—but it was still really exciting.
Wait, so are they going to send you your diploma in the mail?
Yes! That’s going to be quite the unboxing.
What did you study at college?
I was a sociology major. I had never even heard of sociology before Hamilton, and I was planning on being an English major. But one of the classes I initially signed up for was full, so the registrar put me into an Intro to Sociology course instead. I’ve never been so grateful for a surprise in my life!
Can you explain your field a little bit?
I like to think of sociology as storytelling. It’s a social science, so there are numbers and data involved, but at the heart of it is a desire to explain narratives about society, and subsets of groups within society.
It was so helpful throughout my time at school and in other jobs I’ve had. I was Editor-in-Chief of a student publication at school, and I was on the executive board of our Debate Society for a long time. Studying sociology gave me the skills to see the big picture just as well as the small building blocks. It also gave me valuable tools for looking at and understanding current events. I almost wish I was going back to school next year so I could take a course called something like “The Sociology of Pandemics”!
I wrote my senior thesis on a topic that I care about, which is gender norms in the gym. So I got to interview Hamilton students and do observations at our on-campus gym to essentially answer the question, “What is going on here?” Through my data collection, I wove a story that answered my research questions. And that type of work is why I love sociology so much. I also think it’s why I enjoy working for RLM so much—because here, too, it’s all about storytelling, and memory, and authenticity. And it means so much to our clients.
It does!
Yeah, it really does. I’ve seen it in action! I think that personal connection that comes with telling people’s stories is the best part.
What’s next for you?
I have a job in PR lined up for the fall. The date got pushed back a little bit because of Covid, but I’m excited to actually have one last kind of real summer break, I guess you could call it. I do wish that I could travel during this time—visiting new places is one of my favorite things. When I was on Hamilton’s debate team, we’d regularly go to tournaments at other schools, even at Stanford! But I think I can still find ways to have socially distanced fun this summer.
Last question! Can you tell us a fun fact about yourself?
Despite our differing last names, I’m Samantha’s daughter! That seems like a pretty fun one. We get to have meetings in the comfort of our living room. I don’t know if I’ll have that luxury in any other job!
