Abigail McIntosh believes the university experience is “beautiful because students are supposed to come out on the other side a totally different version of themselves.”
The high school version of Abigail initially “wrote off” UNH as a less appealing option because it was close to her hometown of Nashua, N.H. While touring campus in the spring of her junior year, however, the communication major found herself walking across the lawn for lunch and hearing the theme song from the Harry Potter movie pealing from the Thompson Hall bell tower.
“I stopped in my tracks and said, ‘Whoa, this is no run-of-the-mill state U!’”
Needless to say, Abigail enrolled at UNH, and embarked on a journey of ceaseless discovery and personal growth. “UNH is fantastic because it is a community of opportunity,” says Abigail, who numbers among her highpoints at UNH learning about surveillance in mass society, creating short films using the Adobe suite, exploring the history and practice of art, and trying her hand at travel writing.
On the topic of travel, Abigail used UNH as a springboard for study abroad in London where, she says, she found “breathing room . . . away from my beautiful UNH community” and had the chance “to take a step outside of myself and really, totally and completely learn about who I am.” She bonded with classmates different from her and “talked to 4 a.m. cab drivers about their families, their favorite foods and whether or not they believe in Brexit.”
Energized by her experience, Abigail returned to Durham and began to focus on her career, for which she had a very specific vision: “I wanted to work at a creative agency in downtown Portsmouth, live in a small apartment and walk to work every day.”
During her junior year, she got an internship in digital marketing in the heart of downtown Portsmouth. And today, voila, she’s living the dream as a fully-employed creative living and working and walking in Portsmouth.
“Everything I’ve done, inside and outside the classroom during my time at UNH, has fed into the success of this professional venture,” says the alumna version of Abigail. “Being at university is an exercise in evolution, and I will carry the lessons I’ve learned about change with me for the rest of my life.”
