Class of 2009 - Allison Dobish

I wanted a place that was close to home and
you know, three hour drive is perfect,
and the campus was absolutely beautiful,
and I'm from the beach so
I wanted to be by the beach too.
I think there are a lot of things in my life
that have happened in the past few years that
made me more motivated and coming to URI I guess
I had all these other opportunities that
I don't think I would have had at other schools.
I've always wanted to kind of open my own store
and by graduating a little bit early and
still wanting to live by school,
I decided that what better way.
You know everyone is on a fixed budget,
especially now with the economy,
so you know it's just I've had to work around
what's going on in today and students and
based on that I think I've done pretty well.
This is just the beginning of I think
hopefully other great experiences,
so this is something on a small scale that someday
I would hope to do in a bigger way.
I studied in Florence, Italy and it was
the best experience in my entire life and I mean
maybe part of that also opened me up into more of
you know the business aspects, but I also,
I took a lot of jewelery baking,
jewelery design while I was there.
I guess just being in Italy, being exposed to
all the fashion and everything there, you know,
opened my eyes up to even more than I had
just being in Rhode Island or being from New York.
I mean I absolutely love the professors that I've had.
I've had such great relationships with them
and you know the faculty, they'll come up to me and
approach me about certain things that
they think could benefit me, just is so rewarding,
and the fact that they you know, know so much about
not even just my academic work but they
know a lot about my personal life.
They're just always willing to help me, I know,
and I'm so grateful to them and if anything you know,
this is all been possible because of them.
On campus I definitely tried to do a lot of things.
When I was a freshman I was one of the starting people
to do Rhody Rides, although it's not still existing,
I thought it was a very important thing because
I'm highly against drunk driving.
So I thought by me donating my time on
a Friday or Saturday night to help people have
a sober driver was very important to me.
I joined a sorority while I was here, Alpha Delta Pi,
and got very involved with that, and I think
I also probably had more of an idea of business
and that helped me grow because
I was the treasurer of my sorority.
I was a URI 101 Mentor, which was something that
despite all my fears of being in front of a classroom
and speaking out, I told myself this is something
that I love to do and I want to help all
these younger students and help them have
the experiences I've had at URI because
I know it's very important.
I never thought I would've grown this much in four years
and have the things that have happened to me happen,
and I'm so happy I chose Rhode Island,
I'm so happy that I did this store,
I'm so happy I went abroad and did everything I've done.