Windham
High School graduates and siblings Ashley and Dan Crocker have both made their
way to the West Coast to pursue their dreams.
Both are making good progress on the path to their chosen career.
After
spending four years at the University of Connecticut and receiving a degree in
chemistry in 2014, Dan began to look for a graduate program in environmental or
atmospheric chemistry. “There’s a lot of
those out here in CA, and not a whole lot anywhere else,” he said, explaining
how he landed in California.
Dan
is currently in a PhD program at the University of California San Diego. He anticipates that the program will take
five or six years to complete. Though he
doesn’t yet have a specific career in mind, he said he would really like to
work in the field of researching climate change.
Some
highlights since graduating from Windham High School include being voted most
outstanding senior in chemistry at UConn during his final year, and getting
into the PhD program, he said.
Dan
doesn’t plan to remain in California after his schooling. “I’d like to come back to New England,” he
said, though the ultimate decision will rest on where he is able to find a job.
Ashley,
on the other hand, is right where she would like to be. After graduating from WHS she headed to
Emerson College in Boston to study film post production. She spent her summers in internship positions
and taking classes, finishing her undergraduate degree in just three years.
One
of the reasons she wanted to finish college quickly was the cost. Her parents were doing her a huge favor, she
said, by helping pay for an expensive school.
“I
wanted to do everything I could to make sure the financial burden on them wasn’t
too much, and that they could retire on time,” she said. Though it was time
consuming to fit four years of school into three, she said she’s glad it worked
out that way.
And
finishing when she did made it possible for her to grab opportunity when it
came along. Ashley’s involvement with a video
game called League of Legends, and her interest in “e-sports” which are
organized video game competitions among the best players in the world, prompted
her to help start a League of Legends club at Emerson in her sophomore year. In the fall semester of her third year, the
club was expanded to a full e-sports club, and officially recognized by the
school. The club allowed her not only to
have fun doing something she loved, but gave her an opportunity to practice
what she was learning in school, she said.
In
the spring of 2015 Ashley did her final semester of school at the Emerson LA
campus, a relatively new program. While
there she did an internship for credit with a company called Psychic Bunny. It
was there that she first worked on a project for Riot Games, the company that
makes League of Legends.
And
in February, she saw a job posting for an assistant editor at Riot Games. She submitted her resume, went through a
rigorous interview process, and ultimately landed the job. Ashley finished her
college degree, helped close up the campus in her role as an RA, and started
her new job the next day. “I think it
was a large intersection of a lot of things that made it work out so that I got
to work at, essentially, my dream job,” she said.
Ashley
said she is enjoying the moment and learning a lot at a company that encourages
everyone who works there to grow in their positions. That presents her with an opportunity to find
out what she likes best and go in that direction. At this time, she said, she prefers features,
which are short documentary pieces.
While
she misses her family all the way across the country, and is glad she had the
chance to grow up someplace like Windham, she is happy with where she is
now.
“This
is the type of thing you can never do in Maine,” she said.
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