GS student Valerie Fendt grew up in Wisconsin and still feels most at home on the shores of Lake Michigan. When her first engagement with college proved to be uninspiring, Fendt instead opted to travel and reside in Europe for the next ten years.
Upon returning home, Fendt applied herself to stagecraft, that is, the technical aspect of theatre, from light boards to the rigging. Soon after, she became an apprentice at Local 18, the Milwaukee Local for the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE). During her ten years of technical service, Fendt received her IATSE journeyman’s card and became the first female rigger of the Local 18 union. By the late 2000s, she had returned her attentions to higher education.
Valerie moved to Boston to enroll in a two-year bookbinding program at the North Bennett Street School, the only full-time vocational craft school remaining in the country. After a brief stint in the conservation lab at MIT after graduating, she commenced work in books and paper conservation at Columbia University’s Conservation Program in Butler Library. It was there she discovered the School of General Studies.
Speaking of her experience at GS, Valerie cites that “professors tend to recognize GS students. They love GS since their students genuinely want to be there”. Her love of literature, from James Baldwin to JM Coetzee, led her to the political writings of Angela Davies and Frantz Fanon, which informed her interest in history. More specifically, Valerie has focused on the processes of decolonization, studying the ways in which people have emancipated themselves, with a more recent attention to the role of education.
Valerie confesses that although she was previously disengaged with the idea of institutional education, she has felt welcomed and valued in every class, and wants to share her experience.
Valerie is a member of the GS Honor Society and has been accepted into the Oral History Master of Arts Program at Columbia. Her sights are set on a PhD with a view to teaching college-level courses within prisons. Speaking on the role of education within the prison system: “There are many paths to liberation, but while we remain the country with the highest number of incarcerated citizens, for some that opportunity is only through the mind.”
