Jeanine Kerridge's advice to all high
school students who think college is not in the cards
for them is to not rule out anything. "Don't pass
it up," the former English major says. "Investigate
your options, check out the Internet, go to College
fairs. It can open so many opportunities for you."
Kerridge, who was the first in her family
to graduate from college, now works for the Indiana
State Senate in Indianapolis for Senators Tom Weatherwax
and Mike Young. She was raised in Evansville and graduated
from the University of Evansville in May 2000 with a
double major in English and creative writing.
Kerridge's potential came to the surface
in one of Dr. John Haegert's courses in American literature.
"Not only was she a superb commentator on literary
works in the classroom," said Haegert, "she
was also an elegant writer and promising scholar."
Consequently, Dr. Haegert asked Kerridge if she would
like to expand her ideas on American fiction, especially
the treatment of female characters, into a year-long
undergraduate research project. After handily succeeding
in the grant competition, she eventually produced a
seventy page thesis entitled "Immaculate Misconceptions:
The New Woman in Modern American Fiction" -- a
proto-feminist study of changing conceptions of female
gender in Hawthorne, Fitzgerald, and Nabokov that Dr.
Haegert characterizes as "splendid." The result
of this enterprise was that she was invited to present
portions of her research at both the Regional Conference
on Undergraduate Research at Butler University and at
the Annual National Conference on Undergraduate Research
held her senior year at the University of Montana.
Kerridge said that had she not attended
college, she probably would not have had the opportunity
to study for a year abroad at the University of Cambridge
in England. "I had always been in Evansville. I
grew up in Evansville, went to school in Evansville
(Harrison High School), went to college in Evansville,
and I really wanted to get away and see some things,"
she said. "There's no better place to study English
literature than at its source in England." She
said it was important to her to have a different cultural
experience and see a different perspective on life.
While there she also met her husband, Paul, and returned
to Evansville where they married in October of 2000.
Soon Kerridge will be going back to college
-- to attend law school. So far, because of her 99th
percentile ranking in her LSAT tests she has a large
variety of choices of universities who have accepted
her including Harvard Law School, Northwestern University,
and Duke University Law School.
Working with the senate as a legislative
assistant for the past year has piqued Kerridge's interest
in the political process. Wherever she chooses to attend
law school she plans to major in international law,
she said.
"I probably wouldn't have had any
of these experiences without attending college,"
she said.
