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New Arrivals
As the semester began, reporter Alejandra O’Leary ’04 and photographer Mark Ostow talked with first-year students about what brought them to Yale, and first impressions.
November/December 2005
Photographs ©Mark Ostow
Jose Abreu
Yale College, Class of 2009
“My fellow students are really nice people. You can really talk to them. I may go to a different dining hall everyday just to talk to random people. I was born in the Dominican Republic. I moved to the U.S. when I was nine, and I lived in the Bronx. It was just a terrible environment there. My high school had a 90 percent dropout rate. A lot of people encouraged me. I’m thinking of doing environmental engineering or Romance languages for my major, but I’m not sure yet.”
Tiffany Davenport
PhD candidate in political science, Graduate School
“The last three years I was the associate director of Human Rights Watch in Los Angeles. I worked in advocacy, development, and public education. I started getting involved in human rights advocacy when I was 14, with Amnesty International, so it’s rooted early in my life. I’m interested in American foreign policy and Latin American politics—issues like corruption, democratization, and populism. And human rights. That will never go away.”
Vivek Krishnamurthy
First-year student, Law School
“I’ve always wanted to work in international trade law. I guess it’s a product of who I am. I’m the child of immigrants, from India to Canada. And within the Canadian part of my background, I grew up mostly in Montreal and Ottawa, which are bilingual cities. Then I went to study in England for two years thanks to a scholarship that was funded by a South African, and while I was there I made friends from around the world.”
Katy Ambrose
Performance student, School of Music
“My parents are both public school music teachers. When I was ten they said, ‘You’re going to be in band,’ and I said, ‘Cool, I want to play saxophone,’ and they said, ‘No, you’re going to play French horn.’ The saxophone was just too loud. It was very frustrating in the beginning. I wanted to quit all the time, but I’m glad I didn’t. I started at college studying biochemistry. I wanted to be a doctor. But it got to the point where I was skipping chemistry class to go practice French horn, and now here I am.”
Amber Joseph
Yale College, Class of 2009
“I’ve met some interesting characters here—to say the least. And it seems like everyone has come here because they’re at least curious about different kinds of people. I was really impressed by the amount of community service the students here do. One of the reasons I picked Yale is because we’re not completely cut off from New Haven.”
Talia Gooding-Williams
Yale College, Class of 2009
“I love just wandering around, because there’s so much going on. This Friday night we’re going salsa dancing.”
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