CHRISTINA SANFORD

While I appreciate the gift of a bilingual education and have used my French countless times, I want to touch on the less concrete things I learned at EB. EB not only instilled in me a global perspective, a love for French culture and an awareness of happenings outside my daily sphere, but encouraged me to be introspective and to know myself. My teachers taught with an overwhelming and contagious enthusiasm that could only have come from a passion for their profession. Libby, the head of the middle school when I attended it, once told me: “Love your job, Christina. Pick one that you’re excited to go to everyday, and that you’d go to even if you weren’t getting paid.” I have spent most of my time since EB trying to figure out what that job could be.

After graduating from EB, I went on to Head Royce for high

school and then Claremont McKenna College for my undergraduate education. Like most everyone, I studied abroad

my junior year. With my accent, or rather lack of accent,
all I had to do was slap on some dark socks and a detached
look and I was treated like every other French student in my
classes at the Sorbonne.

After college graduation, contemplating an MD/Ph.D, I
spent a year as a research fellow at the National Institutes
of Health studying HIV immune reactions. I was asked to
stay on for another year but research was not for me. I was
content to drop the Ph.D part. I came back to the Bay Area
to work while I applied to medical school. It was an arduous
process, but in the end I was accepted to many places any
parent would love to brag to their friends about.

Still, this was not the direction my life was to take. Just as I was about to sign my financial aid papers, I realized that while I would have liked being a doctor, I would not have loved it. I was face to face with that question, what do I want to do with my life? It was then that I thought back to the happiest times of my life and I remembered our eighth grade trip to Washington D.C. When I came home from that trip I told everyone I knew that I wanted to be a Supreme Court Justice. And while I don’t think this aspiration will be as prophetic as Samuel Alito’s yearbook prediction, I have decided that I would love to be a lawyer. So after another round of tests, essays and personal statements, I will be attending UCLA law school this coming fall, where I plan to study International Law.

When I was asked to write this profile, I took a look at what
some of my fellow classmates had to say, mostly for inspiration,
but also to see what everyone was up to. Libby must have given her advice to all of us because we are all doing things that excite us. While I was not aware of it at the time, EB gave me the tools
to figure out who I am and what I want from my life. It taught me not only how to succeed in the eyes of others, but in my own as well.

[Written in 2006]