Choosing NC State

James Hankins discusses how NC State's political science and Teaching Fellows programs influenced his decision to attend the university.

Interview on 2011-07-14 00:00:00 -0400

Transcript

00:00:00.000 Initially my career path from day one since I'm in middle school was to be an actor slash writer slash producer.
00:00:11.199 That's what I wanted to do. My cousin and I were trying to write movies. I wrote a couple plays and stuff that were terrible, but I wrote plays and stuff.
00:00:20.081 I got involved in music a lot and I was into making music and stuff like that. All that stuff was there.
00:00:28.581 But then I think it was in high school where I started to realize that elections mattered
00:00:34.833 and people that got elected and what they did was very important and that we have a responsibility to pay attention to that.
00:00:42.563 I also knew that I liked education and I thought education was the most important issue in our country,
00:00:49.804 and at that point I figured NC State has a program-at the time-it had a program in political science
00:00:58.545 and you could get a concentration in education and be a member of the college of humanities and social sciences,
00:01:04.831 so I thought that was fantastic.
00:01:06.921 Fortunately I was able to get the Teaching Fellows scholarship and so that helped push my decision a little bit more,
00:01:12.772 and State was the type of school that, you know, I wanted to experience that, and it wasn't-.
00:01:18.003 Of course it's not considered as lofty of a school as Carolina when it comes to aspirations in political science
00:01:28.853 and that area but I also knew NC State was a school that I felt comfortable in
00:01:33.549 and I knew that my major, I could do a lot with the political science, I could do a lot with education,
00:01:39.648 and the education program here, especially through Teaching Fellows, was fantastic, so that helped make my decision.