Kevin Ballen didn’t plan on taking two gap years. But he did intend to live a life less constrained by society’s expectations.
“In high school, my goal was to shift civic engagement from transactional hour requirements to a meaningful, everyday opportunity to make ourselves and those around us better,” he said.
The 20-year-old first-year, who lives in Holworthy Hall, described his early years of community action — volunteering every month at a homeless shelter — as rote. “It’s just what we did, because it was the right thing to do,” he recalled.
But a single moment made him...
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