As Lindsey Foster ’20 walked to her Global Shakespeare class earlier this year, she received a call from an unknown number. She answered, only guessing at who might be calling. That’s when she got the news — she had been accepted to Cornell Law School.
“I was trying really hard not to be dramatic. I was so excited,” Foster recalled.
Come early August, Foster will enroll at Cornell Law, where she hopes to find a community like the one she found at Hamilton. Having thrived in the close-knit “Hamily,” she said that the small size of Cornell’s law school greatly impacted her decision to accept their offer. “I wanted to keep that community aspect where students and faculty are all just really close and support each other,” she said.
Majors: Creative writing, government
Hometown: Glastonbury, Conn.
High school: Glastonbury High School
Although she is still deciding what type of law she wants to specialize in, Foster knew she wanted to attend law school since her sophomore year at Hamilton. After initially planning to only major in creative writing, she started taking government classes during her first year and quickly decided to also major in the subject.
“I took constitutional law and liked how it’s logic, but it’s logic through words, which gave me more room to maneuver, to persuade. I thought that was a really fascinating intellectual exercise that I would love to just do for my career,” she said, describing how law builds off her major concentrations. “I’ve definitely changed my way of thinking over the past four years, and I’m sure it’ll change even more in law school.”
Foster said she wants to use her education to help others, adding, “I think I’d be really unsatisfied if my career did not help people in some way, and I think that’s why a career in law would be really meaningful for me.” Foster cited Professor Peter Cannavo’s Political Theory of the Environment as the course that motivated her to write her thesis on climate refugees. The class also prompted her interest in international law’s ability to aid those in complex humanitarian crises, which she anticipates learning more about at Cornell.
Though she is sad to have said an abrupt goodbye to Hamilton following the campus closure, Foster knows it’s not really goodbye. Because Cornell Law School is only a few hours away, she anticipates returning to visit community members, particularly her club soccer teammates and the faculty who helped her on her way to law school.
