“I spent a little time, a little while ago, up north,” Community Life Coordinator (CLC) and alumna Katy Collins (’06), said about her upcoming move to Boston, Massachusetts. “I definitely wasn’t prepared for the cold then. I didn’t own the right cold weather clothes and I was freezing the entire time. This time, my fiancée and I are prepared. We’ve bought all of our gear to escape the cold and I think that we will be ok. The weather certainly is different there, so we’ll see. I think it will be worth the cold.”

Collins, who has been a CLC since 2010, will be resigning from her position to attend a graduate program at Simmons College in Boston with her fiancée. Acknowledging that her time working at New College has been valuable, she maintains that this decision is a necessary change of pace.

“Moving to the northeast seemed like a decision worth making,” Collins said. “My fiancée and I will be pursuing graduate work, and people up there might be more accepting of our relationship. We can be legally married and have children. It feels like we might be able to build a life there a little easier than we could in Florida. I think people will be generally more accepting.

“I really enjoy working at New College in the supportive position I am in, but it was not my ultimate plan to be in the coordinator position that I have now,” Collins reiterated. “My fiancée and I decided once were both accepted into the graduate program at Simmons that graduate school is necessary to further ourselves in our careers, ultimately.”

Before Collins became a CLC in 2010, she had been a Resident Advisor (RA) for three years, and two summers at New College. Collins mentioned that when she became a part of New College staff, there had been a lot of “live-on” positions that people had resigned from, and she was particularly fit for the job because of her alumna status.

“I sort of fell into a situation where I was really qualified for the position,” Collins said. “I had been in a similar job to the CLC position because I had been an RA, and I was already familiar with New College culture because I had just been a student here. Honestly, my position was a really young position when I came into it. The positions for coordinator that live on campus have only been around since about 2005, so it was actually a really new area of the school that I was coming into.”

In the three years that she has held her position as a CLC, Collins emphasized that she has grown close to her coworkers and that she will miss the supportive position that she had at the New College while she is pursuing her dreams at Simmons College.

“I’ve honestly just had a lot of fun as a CLC,” Collins said. “I especially appreciate having been able to have such a casual relationship with all of the people that I work with. They are really wonderful. I will really miss them. They are probably my favorite part about this job.”