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Snapshots of seniors in their final semester

By Bonnie Meibers, Senior Staff Writer

This is the first installment of a three part series. As graduation approaches and seniors' college years come to an end, many look to the journey ahead and many reflect on the years at Miami that are now behind them.

Senior Jackie Jeambey rises most mornings at 5:30. She pours herself some coffee and reads the news. She then makes her 25-minute commute.

Jeambey is currently student teaching eighth graders at a local middle school.

"They're very squirrelly," she said.

Jeambey is also waiting to hear back from the Fulbright Student Program - a program of merit-based grants that sends students and other scholars to countries around the world to teach or conduct research.

Jeambey found out in January that she was a semi-finalist for the program. If all goes as planned, she will go to Bulgaria for nine months.

Once there, she would teach science in a school setting and teach people about conservation as there are many natural park areas in the country.

There is a teacher job fair in April. Jeambey will be attending it because she will not find out about the Fulbright program until mid-April.

"I'm excited to see where I end up," Jeambey said. "I'm excited for my friends' futures, too."

Jeambey's future is still very much up in the air until she hears back from the Fulbright program. But she has friends in the business school who have had jobs secured since November.

Chris Lehn, also a senior, is one of those people. The economics major accepted a job in October as a financial analyst for Textron. The conglomerate consists of Bell Helicopter, Cessna Aircraft and other aerospace and defense companies.

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"I know people who applied for 150 jobs," Lehn said. "I just went to one career fair."

After graduation, Lehn will move to Georgia to start his job.

"I'm ready for it," he said.

Something Lehn is not quite ready to do is say goodbye to football. He has worked with Miami's football team for his entire Miami career.

"Moving away from something I've been apart of since the fourth grade will be tough," he said.

Will Dimas applied to eight law schools. He was accepted to five over winter term, including Loyola University in Chicago, Marquette University in Wisconsin and American University in Washington D.C.

Now all that's left for Dimas is to choose.

"I'm just asking myself, 'Which one do I think I will be more successful at?'" he said.

Kelsy Chesser, an art history major, plans to move to Amsterdam in June to work as an au pair, or international nanny.

She has an interview soon with a family to determine whether they will be compatible. Chesser will learn which family she will be placed with by the end of February.

Chesser wants to do something art-related while in Amsterdam. The only stipulation is that, while working as an au pair, she can only have one job.

"I was always frustrated by the kinds of constraints people put on jobs you can get outside of college," Chesser said. "It's almost like people have this idea that if you're not in a major that has a linear path that you're not going to go anywhere."

After having friends and family frequently ask what she was going to do after graduation, Chesser said she came to see that she could do anything with her degree in the humanities. She has always wanted to go to graduate school, which is Chesser's next step after au pairing.

"It's bittersweet to think about graduating because I've created such an important community here," Chesser said.