Introduction: Yasmin Boakye


Hi everyone!

My name is Yasmin Boakye, and I’m a first-year student in the Nonfiction Writing Program. I'm originally from the Maryland suburbs of Washington DC, but have spent most of the last decade in St. Louis, with a three-year stint in Abu Dhabi in between. 

As an undergraduate student, I pursued a major in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality studies and minors in Anthropology and Writing. I developed a passion for language and literature early on in life, and always thought that I would major in English, but was turned off in college by the homogeneity of the curriculum and the inaccessibility of the texts and assignments. I found my home in the social sciences, where I fell in love with the contemporary, visible applications that theory and ethnography provided. In my junior year, I became a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Research Fellow, which allowed me to extend my passion for interdisciplinarity into conversations with folks across the humanities.

Through some combination of luck and extreme Googling skills, I landed an awesome baccalaureate fellowship with NYU's Abu Dhabi campus as a Writing Fellow, where I was first formally trained as a Writing Center Consultant and had the opportunity to support classes across the Arts and Humanities division. I enjoyed working with international students from over 100 different countries, and working outside of the US context. 

After returning to the US in 2016, I spent two years working in Admissions for my alma mater, and  over time I gained the confidence to apply for graduate school in order to stay in higher education in student-facing roles. I'm quite happy to be at Iowa so far, and looking forward to the opportunity to work in a Writing Center once again! 

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