Interim alumna Bathsheba Demuth comments on her 1999 gap year

Bathsheba Demuth engaged in one of the most unusual and interesting experiences Interim had to offer during her gap year in 1999. At 18, she headed off to the town of Old Crow in the Yukon to help train sled dogs, some to compete in the Yukon Quest, a 1,000 mile international sled dog race across Alaska and Canada. Her writing about this experience was fascinating as she noted the combination of old and new within the Gwich'in community where she lived: seeing people wearing Calvin Klein jeans and moccasins, or eating caribou meat with Tater Tots. She went on to attend Brown University and is currently an Assistant Professor of History and Environment & Society at Brown with a new book just out called Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait. She is working on another book drawn from her experience in the Yukon.

Of her gap year she noted, "I can honestly say my gap year experience set the course for the rest of my adult life - from what I studied in college to my choices in graduate school to what I research and write about now, as faculty. I wouldn't be the same person now without it!"