I graduated from Cornell, including a year at the London School of Economics, and then worked for several months at Citibank’s economics department writing for their newsletter and then copyediting. Having gotten bored, I decided I needed another degree. I decided on law school, having never met a lawyer, because it didn’t require writing a thesis and there were a lot of boys, and it sounded good. Before I started I spent three months travelling around Europe, including Greece, Yugoslavia and Israel. I just realized I need to make this shorter…anyway, law school, wanted to work for legal aid but they were broke that year, went to Europe and Turkey for three months with boyfriend and his brother, then came back and got a job at a small law firm. Then a year plus later got a job at a wall street law firm. After terrible stomach aches cause I hated my job, I got a job inhouse at a large Swiss company. Yay! Cured my stomach ache and enjoyed working in various parts of the company for many years. Lived in New York,  North Carolina, New Jersey and Atlanta. Took early retirement rather than move (with my teenage daughter) back to New Jersey, worked for another company for awhile and then retired for good.

In the meantime I got married, then, when I was 37, I had a baby. She died when she was six months old and that nearly destroyed me. And I got divorced. On my long journey back from that I had the incredible support of friends and family and experienced a lot of growth and perspective. And adopted a little girl from Paraguay when I was 41. She is 27 now and expecting her first child in July.

I am still active in politics (I live in Georgia’s 6th District, you may have heard of our special election for Congress), I still play tennis, and in the last ten years have taken up oil painting (I still remember Mrs. Guccione letting me watercolor to my heart’s content for a semester and not do any of the assignments), and I’ve written sermons and reflections as a Worship Associate at my Unitarian Universalist congregation. And I still love to travel. In the last six or so years I’ve been to Australia, Morocco, Costa Rica, India, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, Peru, Patagonia, Poland, the Baltics and St Petersburg, Russia and I just came back from a trip to Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

Reflecting on the ways Hunter affected my life, I would say one of the biggest ways was that it gave me a certain confidence in my abilities, apart from social life, which grew over time especially as I realized how special we were (ie, college was actually easier to shine at than Hunter) . Even more, I faced a lot of sexism at college and in my entire professional life, but I believe that attending Hunter when it was not coed helped me keep social and intellectual issues separate, and helped me be confident that the problem was not with me, but with the other people who couldn’t seem to get over the fact that I was a friendly, likeable woman who was also good at her job.

I’m so looking forward to seeing all of you in June!
Darya
PS. As some of you know I always hated my name (Doris) I could never think of a good nickname til I took Russian at Hunter and the teacher gave us all Russian names corresponding to ours. As soon as I started Cornell I told everyone my name was Darya and have used it ever since. Thank you Mrs. Ellberger!