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Her
Mind is on the Mind
Despite the fact that
she is still without a firm job offer, Alana Curewitz ’09 is not concerned. Not to worry,
she says, she’s been on “a million” interviews
recently, and, like many of her Smith classmates, has complete
confidence that she’ll get the position she wants.
 What the psychology major
wants is a two-year position in a hospital research facility
so that she can add to her lab experience before entering
a clinical doctorate program in a few years. She’s
already had nearly a dozen interviews at the neuroscience
and psychiatric research programs of McLean and Massachusetts
General hospitals in Boston. Her first choice is to work
with a team conducting research on bipolar and psychotic
disorders.
It isn’t surprising
that Curewitz has a certain fascination with the mind.
The Peabody, Massachusetts, native used her Praxis internship
as a junior and spent a summer with a Harvard University
professor investigating attempted suicide. Her senior year
was devoted to conducting a special studies project on
hoarding habits in children in foster care. Even as an
adolescent, she says, she was intrigued by why serial killers
were serial killers. She researched the topic for a thesis
in high school and used Jack the Ripper as her subject.
“I like investigating the mind,” she says. “I’m
always doing research, it seems, but I’m most interested
in asking ‘why.’ I want to analyze the [brain]
mechanisms behind certain behaviors.”
The first in her family
to go to college, Curewitz came to Smith by chance. Both
her high school English and Advance Placement calculus
teachers recommended she consider Smith. Both noticed her
keen interest in mathematics and a penchant for asking
questions. “Math was one of my best subjects
in high school,” she recalls. “I was one of two
girls in a calculus class full of guys, and every time I
asked a question one of those guys would mutter, ‘oh
that’s a ridiculous question.’
“’You need Smith!’” my teachers said. “’At
Smith, they’ll nurture your ideas and value your opinions.’ And
looking back now, I can honestly say that there’s not a single instance
in my four years here when that wasn’t true.”
While she continued to
cultivate her love of mathematics and nourish her curiosity
for the mechanisms of the mind, she has also been actively
involved in the performing arts at Smith. She performs
as a flutist with the Smith College Orchestra and Wind
Ensemble and on a whim started an informal flute quartet
her senior year. She also joined the Jazz Ensemble last
September and began plunking around on the bass guitar,
learning in a year how to play with enough skill that “by
May I was playing the bass guitar on every song.”
Curewitz attributes her
success with the bass to an “amazing
instructor.” Actually, come to think of it, she says, “All
instructors, everyone I’ve worked with at Smith, are
amazing. Why are they amazing? Because everyone I’ve
come in contact with, whether it’s faculty members,
music conductors or Smith staff, push me because they know
I like to succeed and that for me, good is never good enough.”
With everything she does,
Curewitz admits to being goal oriented and driven to succeed.
Her days at Smith were spent in motion, moving nonstop
8 a.m. to 10 p.m., she says, from labs to classes to work-study
jobs to music rehearsals. “If
I look at my life here as it progressed, I realize that the
more I’ve taken on, the happier I am and the more sleep
I get,” she smiles. “I don’t know how the
sleep part is humanly possible, but somehow, I did it.”
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