Shelby Jarrett, age 23, grew up in Madison County, Georgia. Shelby says the rural county has a very strong sense of community. She grew up on a farm raising livestock, and even though she was an only child, the entire community, not just her parents, took responsibility for raising her and the other children growing up there. She remembers it fondly and still travels home to visit her parents when she can.
Because she grew up in such a remote area, Jarrett spent a lot of time reading. Like many children of her generation, she developed an especial fondness for the work of J.K. Rowling. Having never quite outgrown the series, she was delighted to visit the Elephant Cafe in Edinburgh this summer, which is generally acknowledged as the birthplace of the Harry Potter series. The series made Shelby love words and writing, and even though it was fiction Rowling still managed to create a real world for so many people.
This is not to say that her taste in books has not grown over time. Of the books she has read lately, her favorite is entitled My Own Country. This memoir was written by the Indian-American physician Abraham Verghese who lived and worked in rural Tennessee during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. As a person of color who was working with a generally reviled portion of the population (namely, the LGBTQ) community, Verghese experienced firsthand both the stigmatization and moments of acceptance experienced by patients with HIV. Jarrett loved this book for its incredible story, the author’s writing style, and for what she learned about HIV/AIDS.
So too have developed her career goals over time. Jarrett began her graduate studies hoping to pursue a career in the publishing world after a series of related internships. After spending some time investigating health and medical journalism, Jarrett thought very seriously about switching concentrations. “It’s very, very interesting to read about obvious topics like cancer and obesity… but really everything [is] a health story,” she says. However, after considering the matter seriously, she decided it was best not to backtrack in her degree and is therefore continuing with her original instinct to pursue academic publishing. “A job where I got to read books all the time would be awesome!”
She is unsure about what specific area of publishing she would like to pursue, however, which also creates uncertainty in where she would like to be in 5 years. After living in the Athens area for most of her life, she hopes to be somewhere new.
Shelby’s six years at UGA have thus far been the result of practical decision-making. She originally chose UGA over other schools, like Washington and Lee, because the Zell Miller Scholarship made the cost of attendance so affordable. She wasn’t sure she would continue at UGA for graduate school but ultimately accepted an assistantship at the university. Despite choosing UGA over her dream schools, she says she doesn’t regret the decision. During her time at UGA, the worst course Shelby experienced was through a Women of Sub-Saharan Africa class. Though the class discussions were intensive and in depth, the professor graded unbelievebly harshly and gave no acknowldgement of the worthwhile class discussions.
No matter where she ends up after grad school, however, she will miss the sense of new beginning that comes with each semester, a quality of college life she will miss after leaving UGA.
Jarrett’s favorite piece of writing thus far is a piece that she wrote about nutrition in rural south Georgia schools. According to Jarrett, she values this piece because it allowed her to feel like a real journalist for the first time. “I got to leave Athens for a week to work on the story and was actually able to spend time interacting with kids about the food they were eating at school versus at home. It felt so much more like real journalism than most class projects at Grady,” she said.
Shelby’s grandmother once told her “this too shall pass”, which means no bad situation can last forever. Whenever she is facing a challenging situation or struggling with school, this phrase comforts her and makes her believe that she will get through it.