Senior Hayley Lazzari from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, ended up at Colgate after first visiting the school over four years ago. 

Coming to Colgate, Lazzari thought that she wanted to concentrate in International Relations. However, after taking an Arabic class as a first-year, she fell in love with both the language and the department. Now, Lazzari is a double major in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and Russian and Eurasian Studies.

“Though it was challenging, I knew that language was something that I was extremely passionate about,” Lazzari said.

On campus, Lazzari is the house manager for Delta Delta Delta sorority, the Chief of Staff of the Student Government Association, the Student Program Coordinator for the Center for Leadership and Student Involvement and a research assistant for Associate Professor of Political Science Bruce Rutherford.

Lazzari has worked for a long list of

impressive internships during her time here at Colgate. The past two summers, she has worked as the International Postal Affairs intern for the United States Postal Service in Washington, D.C. Last summer, she was also a Web Development Intern for a company based out of Seattle and Political and Military Intelligence Analyst for a company based out of San Francisco. This school year, Lazzari is a Research Analyst for the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, which is part of the Virtual Foreign Service program.

When asked what she is going to miss most about Colgate, Lazzari spoke to the community she has been able to find here.

“I’m going to miss being as close as I am to the people that I have met here at Colgate. I have made the best friends that I have ever had, and I will be really sad if we move far away from each other,”  Lazzari said.

Finally, when asked what advice she has for underclassmen, Lazzari encouraged them to get involved and ask questions.

“It took me so long to figure out how Colgate worked on a social level, and for me, that was extremely difficult and isolating. The way that I broke out of my shell and took control of my Colgate experience was to get involved in any way that I could … College is about change, growth and learning, and if I could do it all over again, I would push my underclassman self to reach out earlier and question absolutely everything because everything that I thought I knew before coming to college has been completely flipped upside-down in a positive way,” Lazzari said.

Contact Tessa Ruff

at [email protected].