Classmate Profile

Over the course of the past few years, we have taken the time to catch up with classmates around the world. Below is our quick snapshot of Spencer Walle ‘10 from July 1, 2017.

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Name: Spencer Benjamin Walle

Hometown: Bedford, Massachusetts

Current location: Malmö, Sweden

What were you involved with at Princeton? I studied Near Eastern Studies with a certificate in South Asian Studies. I also worked at Public Safety, was a member at Princeton Tower Club, and proudly led with Outdoor Action.

What's your favorite memory of Princeton? Hard choice - either late meal at Frist with my best friend, or having the privilege of studying Persian literature under Michael Barry

What have you been up to in the seven years (!) since graduation? What are you currently doing? What has your path been like since college? What's next?

Ah! I spent my first year after graduation working as a project manager at a translation agency in NYC. I went on to quit to strike it out on my own as a freelance translator, which is still my job today. In 2013 I chose not to renew my lease and instead spend some time traveling - I ended up falling in love in Iceland and living there for two years before we moved to Sweden in early 2016. We live in Malmö, across the water from Copenhagen, where I'm immersed in at least five different languages in my daily professional and personal life. Despite all this moving around, my professional life has been pretty narrow: translating technical texts from Japanese and German to English. I'm taking advantage of free education here to learn some more languages and maybe expand my repertoire, and I'm hoping to add a side career in programming perhaps a few years down the road.

What about your life now would your sophomore-year self be most surprised by? I was always too timid to take the plunge and study abroad, even for a semester or summer, so I think I'd be shocked that I live abroad now. Sweden was also nowhere on my radar — sophomore Spencer would probably have picked India or China.

What's a lesson/belief/idea/skill you've learned since graduating? Hm, I went from barely being able to prepare spaghettios to being a pretty enthusiastic plant-based cook at home. That, and a bunch of vague things like "having perspective" and "learning to believe in myself" that adults do.

Anything else you want the class to know? Let me know if you're ever passing through Copenhagen – I'm always happy to catch up

Classmate Profile

Over the course of the past few years, we have taken the time to catch up with classmates around the world. Below is our quick snapshot of Laura Hankin ‘10 from November 2, 2016.

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Name: Laura Hankin

Hometown: Washington, D.C.

Current location: New York City

What were you involved with at Princeton?  

I was big into the theater scene (Triangle, PUP, Intime, PSC, etc...), plus Tower. 

What's your favorite memory of Princeton?

The first thing that comes to mind is Dean's Date--staying up all night in Frist with friends, getting loopy as we tried to write 20 well-researched pages in 10 hours, then trooping over to Tower for breakfast sandwiches to celebrate. (It's probably a lot more fun in my memory than it was at the time.)

What have you been up to in the six years (!) since graduation? What are you currently doing? What has your path been like since college? What's next?

When I graduated, I moved to NYC to be an actor. I got to do some really cool shows (as well as some very strange ones, like a site-specific play in an actual graveyard...), but I soon realized how much I wanted to make my own work. So I started writing. I co-created a web series, Emergency Contacts, which is basically live-action female Bert & Ernie. Fellow 2010er Dominique Salerno and I started making feminist comedy videos with our sketch group Hurdy Blurdy (favorites include a trailer for a Ghostbusters reboot starring Hillary Clinton, and a "Santa Baby"-themed plea to Saint Nick to help us freeze our eggs.) And last year, I published my first novel, The Summertime Girls, with Penguin Random House, which was a crazy, dream-come-true experience. Hopefully the future holds more books and more fun creative collaborations, and maybe even being able to support myself solely through my artistic endeavors instead of having to work a bunch of random day jobs. (I've sung to so, so many babies.)

What about your life now would your sophomore-year self be most surprised by?

I think my sophomore-year self would be surprised by how uncertain my whole career still feels. If I told her that I had published a novel and been in a movie, she'd do a big happy dance and be like, "Okay so you're a movie star/famous author now! Cool, SET FOR LIIIIIIIFE!" And then when I told her that wasn't true that all--that I still had to work all sorts of day jobs, and deal with plenty of rejections--her naive little face would fall, and she'd look into switching her major, and then ultimately decide to go into the arts anyway. 

What's a lesson/belief/idea/skill you've learned since graduating?

I've learned to play guitar, kind of! (Like on the level of a fifth grader at a school talent show.) But I've also learned a little more about how to stand up for myself and my ideas, instead of trying to please everyone all the time. (Is this a good enough answer? I hope you like it!)