Videos: At His One-Year Anniversary, Tristan Seavey Reflects on the Benefits of Being a Mitchell Scholar With his first two semesters at Bates College done and dusted, Tristan Seavey, the 2022 Mitchell Scholar from Calais Middle/High School, had some time to reflect on how the Mitchell Institute and the Mitchell Scholar community have been forces for good this past year.
Since attending his first Mitchell Institute event — the Welcome Celebration — in early August 2022, Seavey has dined with donors and fellow Scholars at Gala and participated in MILE I Weekend. He also has secured a Fellowship from the Mitchell Institute to help pay his living expenses during a summer internship at the Maine MILL, the Museum of Innovation, Learning, and Labor, in Lewiston, where he is researching Wabanaki history for a future exhibit, giving tours, and performing various tasks.
Along the way, he has come to appreciate how the Mitchell Scholarship is so much more than a scholarship.
“It’s really easy to view the Mitchell Scholarship as just financial assistance with tuition,” Seavey said. “But it’s also a support community.”
That support from the Mitchell Scholar community can take many forms. While the community can help connect Scholars with career opportunities, it also can help Scholars with a more fundamental challenge: navigating the transition to college itself.
“I think it’s really easy, when entering your first semester of college, to psych yourself out, but something the Mitchell Institute offers to its Scholars is a community that really believes in you and wants to see you succeed,” he said.
“We even have a group chat where we look out for each other. And we reach out occasionally and congratulate each other, whether that be for interviews or just with graduation. I think that speaks volumes to the type of people who get chosen as Mitchell Scholars.”
Find out more about what Seavey thinks of his Mitchell Scholar experience — at the one-year anniversary of being named a Scholar — in these videos recorded in the George and Helen Ladd Library at Bates College.