Editor's Note: This is the second of a series of two articles examining the lives of four recent Dartmouth graduates.
On June 9, over 1,000 graduating seniors received their diplomas, and despite being dressed in the style-erasing classic black robes, each had a unique story to tell about his or her time spent at Dartmouth over the past four years.
Several seniors spoke with The Dartmouth about the activities and pastimes that have shaped their college lives: here are their stories.
Emily Quetone
For Emily Quetone, service has provided a lifetime of lessons.
The 21-year-old Native American Studies major and education and French minor from Rochester, Minn., has been active in several Tucker Foundation organizations since freshman year. She credits the Foundation's community service philosophy with helping to shape her life.
As volunteer, chairperson and student community intern for the Leadership Encouragement And Development student mentoring program in a West Lebanon low-income housing community, Quetone has integrated her love for children with her desire to help others succeed.
"LEAD is a social and educational program," Quetone said. "We try to foster a sense of community for these kids through one-on-one mentoring."
As part of a large family growing up, Quetone said her initial reasons for joining LEAD included interacting with small children once again.
"It's nice to leave campus and to worry about other people, and not to just worry about your own life all the time," she said. "Once you're so attached to those kids ... once you're there, you never want to leave."
Quetone said that her own family situation also led to her decisions to become involved with teaching and community service.
"My family moved around a lot when growing up " it was always that sense of community that defined home for us," she said. "I think that's how a lot of these kids [at LEAD] are. It's always important that someone's always there for you."
Quetone's Native American background has also played a role in her community service efforts. She spent a leave term working for the Head Start program in the Native American community of Tahlequah, Okla. -- an experience she described as an "awakening."
"That's my native community," she said. "By the end of junior year, I definitely knew where my passions were. I knew that I wanted to teach, to be with kids and to go back to my native community."
After graduation, Quetone plans to teach in Hawaii and attend law school to earn a degree in travel law.
About her desire to travel for educational experience Quetone said, "I think that being exposed to a vast amount of cultural aspects makes a world of difference."
Adam Sepulveda
Adam Sepulveda's rise to the chief position within Dartmouth's largest student organization was more than just unexpected. It was a true shock.
The president of the Dartmouth Outing Club from Spring term 2001 to this past Winter term, Sepulveda received notification of the election process via Blitzmail while on the biology foreign study program in Costa Rica.
"I received a blitz from one of my friends. It said, 'we think you should run for DOC president. The elections are tonight,'" Sepulveda said. "I blitzed back and said, 'I'll think about it.' I checked back two weeks later and had about 800 blitzes saying 'Congratulations.'"
This surprise win was the evolutionary and environmental biology major's first encounter with the "DOC bureaucracy," he said. Previously, Sepulveda had led kayaking and canoeing trips through the Ledyard Canoe Club and had served as the group's vice president and secretary, as well as having worked as a freshman trips leader.
In retrospect, Sepulveda said his inexperience with the DOC directorate proved to be beneficial, especially in regard to making the group more inclusive and less meetings-oriented. Under his direction, a large internal overhaul of the organization met with success while preserving its primary objective -- accessibility to outdoor activities.
Sepulveda's own experiences with the outdoors before arriving at Dartmouth were of a more warm-weather nature, he said. The Ventura, California native spent his spare time hiking, at athletic events or at the beach -- a luxury unavailable to residents of Hanover.
Nonetheless, he said that the transition to the colder climate, and the change in outdoor options, was easy.
"I've fallen in love with the snow," Sepulveda said. "That's one of the reasons I picked this school, to have four seasons." He said that winter sports have become a "key ingredient" in his persona.
Sepulveda will have to put his love of the cold on hiatus for his first postgraduate year when he travels to Kenya for 12 months to pursue research of zebra social behavior.
Once he returns, graduate study in ecology or education and a stint in high school teaching are among possible options.
"All I know is that I want to have an adventure," Sepulveda said. "I'll pick and choose my job depending on the adventure."
