Sarah Pitts, junior with a double major in English literature and Spanish, was recently named a finalist for one of the nation’s most prestigious academic scholarships.
Pitts said the spring before she came to Auburn, Azeem Ahmed, 2013 Harry S. Truman Scholarship recipient, inspired her to apply for the scholarship after seeing the former recipient speak.
“I was impressed and inspired by him, so I figured out what I needed to do to be eligible for the Truman and I did it,” Pitts said.
Pitts said she filled out a lengthy application about academics, public service and political policies after her nomination.
“I secured a legislative internship in Washington, D.C., last summer with Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions," Pitta said. "That was the biggest part of being ready for the application. After being nominated by Dr. Paul Harris, my faculty representative, I applied online.”
Pitts said the final step she is preparing for is an interview before a panel from the Truman Board.
“This will be the determining factor of whether or not I receive the scholarship, and I will be going up against other finalists from Alabama who will be interviewing on the same day,” Pitts said.
Pitts said she wanted to pursue undergraduate research to learn more about postmodernism, investigate Martin Heidegger, a german philosopher, and seize an opportunity to work with one of her favorite professors.
“Dr. Murray Jardine is one of the absolute best professors I’ve ever had, and I wanted a chance to do a more in-depth study into his field, political theory,” Pitts said. “Anything and everything Dr. Jardine has to teach me is extremely valuable.”
Pitts said she is most interested by modern and postmodern literature and literary and political theory.
“My academic endeavors, especially my time in the English literature track at Auburn, have taught me to think critically, to express myself eloquently and to interrogate the world like a text,” Pitts said.
Outside of her academic endeavors, Pitts said she is a collegiate women’s B cyclist for Auburn’s club cycling team, the Auburn Flyers.
“Anyone who knows me already knows this about me since I never shut up about cycling, but I love to talk about it,” Pitts said. “I cycle around 100 miles per week, and I wish I had time to ride four times that amount.”
Pitts said her favorite memory at Auburn was the result of a spontaneous biking expedition with a friend.
“Last semester at 11 p.m. on Nov. 30, I got a text from my best friend asking if I wanted to ride my bike to Tuskegee National Park to camp,” Pitts said. “We didn’t do any planning or forethought. We just grabbed our hammocks and a jar of peanut butter and at midnight on Dec. 1 cycled the 14 miles in the dark, through mud and gravel, to find a campsite at Tuskegee.”
Pitts said even though they didn’t bring blankets or sleeping bags, it was still her favorite college moment.
“By 4 a.m., we were so cold and miserable that we packed up and cycled back to campus, covered in mud and pine straw and tired as dogs,” Pitts said. “We collapsed in my bed at 6 a.m. and got maybe an hour of sleep before making it to 8 a.m. classes…and that’s how I went impulsively camping in December with no sleeping bag — one of my absolute favorite memories from college.”
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