Welcome to Season 2 of Work in Progress—a limited podcast series exploring the unique career journeys of Amherst College students. In today’s episode, Senior Marketing and Communications Intern for the Loeb Center Ava Zielinski ’25 chats with Sydney Keating ’25 about life as a triple-major, her soon-to-be-finished thesis, and preparing for post-grad life.
Sydney is a Computer Science, Philosophy, and English triple-major and is completing a creative writing thesis in the English department. Beyond her studies, Sydney works at the IT desk, as a DEI intern in the Computer Science Department, and is a reserve tour guide. Upon graduating, Sydney will be working for Microsoft in New York City, after interning for the company in previous summers.
The transcription below has been edited for clarity.
Ava: Welcome back to a Work in Progress, installment two. My name’s Ava Zielinski, Senior Marketing and Communications Intern at the Loeb Center. Today, I had the wonderful opportunity to speak to Sydney Keating, who is a graduating senior currently, and we talked about everything from her triple majors to her thesis to also preparing for post-grad life.
Ava: Hello, Syd. Welcome in. We are very excited to have you here today.
Before we kind of jump right into everything, if you want to tell the world who you are, what you’re doing here at Amherst and everything in between.
Sydney: Totally. Okay. Yeah. I’m Syd. I’m a senior. I’m a computer science, English and philosophy triple major.
Ava: Oh, my gosh. How do you have time?
Sydney: That’s like a really good question. It’s a great question. Fair enough. And yeah, I’m writing a thesis this semester in English, which is very fun, very cool. And yeah, those are like the big things about me.
I also work at the Loeb Center, I also work a number of other jobs on campus. I work at the IT desk, and I also work in the Computer Science Department as a DEI intern doing outreach and community stuff. And I’m a reserve tour guide, but up until this semester, I was an active tour guide for like two years.
Ava: Ah, that’s wild. So when you first got here, were you like, okay, I want to be a triple major or was it sort of the vibe where, okay, I’m starting to get interested in a lot of things and I don’t want to choose between them. Not like a ‘Sophie’s choice’ moment, where you are like, you know, we’ll just, we’ll have everybody, everybody’s welcome now.
Sydney: I kind of came in. I knew I wanted to do Comp Sci and English. I was like, I like both. I’m good at both. It seems cool. And then in my junior fall, I took a class in the Philosophy Department with Professor Leydon-Hardy. And I’ve taken a couple philosophy courses, not that many, but I was like, this is really cool. This is awesome.
And then my junior spring, I was like, could I maybe major? I only have this semester and two more semesters. If I take two philosophy classes for the next three semesters, I can do the major. I kind of got into it a little late, but I really was like, this is something I can see myself doing post-grad.
So I was like, I’m going to try doing it and it worked out.
Ava: Oh my gosh. Wow, that’s amazing, too. You didn’t put a lot of pressure on yourself there. It sounds kind of like it materialized later on, but you kind of just rolled with it.
Sydney: Oh, yeah, pretty much. I just was like maybe I could do the major. And then I was like, okay, no, I’m not going to. And then I was like, if I don’t do the major, I’ll end up two classes short of the degree. I might as well just go for it.
Ava: And unfortunately, Amherst doesn’t have minors or anything like that. And if you’re submitting your resume to some other Amherst alums, you’re like, oh, I did a concentration in Philosophy. They’re like, we all know that’s a lie. You’re not quite there yet, but like, keep trying.
In terms of all the lovely campus jobs that you have, no shade to the Loeb Center. We love you, we work for you, so you’re really great. But what would you say has been your favorite experience thus far?
Sydney: Oh, man. Okay. It’s tough. I would say that my favorite has probably been, if not the Loeb Center, the IT desk. That’s been a blast. I love working there. It’s just full of a whole bunch of like dorks. I don’t know if they are seeing this, but, like, they are super dorky, everyone there. I love working for you guys.
Ava: IT desk we love you. We love you so much. You’re really helpful because I don’t know, I don’t know anything about computers, like, nothing. So they’ve been very helpful.
Sydney: Yeah, they’re awesome. And I get to go there and they talk about video games, so it’s kind of perfect. And I yeah, I think that’s my favorite.
It’s really cool to work with computers. I’ve gotten to do a couple of cool projects there and I like helping people. And it’s kind of awesome when a professor calls in that I know or a friend submits a ticket and I’m like, oh, hey, I probably don’t know if I could help you, but I can find someone who can help you. And like, that’s my job. That makes sense.
Ava: That’s so cool. Now, what was your sort of passion for computer science coupled with your interest in working at the IT help desk? Is this something that you want to continue going forward?
Sydney: I would love to. It was my junior spring and I was like, I kind of want to get another job. And it was between this and working at the Theater Department, like Kirby, I think doing stage management. I think it was legit, like building sets. And I’ve never done that before.
Ava: That is very, very cool. But if you don’t have a lot of experience in that, that could be a really steep learning curve.
Sydney: Yeah, right I’ve never done it before. I was just looking for something to do on campus and then the IT desk had something open and I was like, okay, I’m a Comp Sci major and they like Comp Sci majors for I guess like tech– obvious reasons. Yes, obvious reasons. And so I was like, yeah, I could do this.
And it was a pretty smooth interview process. And they like I was a Comp Sci major and like I wrote a pretty good cover letter apparently, and yeah, it worked out pretty well.
I will say I don’t think you definitely need one if you’re able to understand complex topics which I think everyone at Amherst can explain them.
Ava: But if I decide to go rogue my last couple of months here, I’ll just apply to the IT desk. With absolutely no experience and see what happens. It’ll be a lesson in rejection, but it’s okay.
Now, in terms of your three lovely majors, what do you think has been your favorite or most memorable class that you’ve taken at Amherst? Because you have a lot to choose from. You have a big pool to choose from.
Sydney: Yeah, absolutely. Gosh. Hmm. I would say my most memorable class would be Ethics in the Philosophy Department with Professor Shaw. It was such a wild class. Like it was different from any class I had ever taken before.
Our professor would give us this reading, and then one group would present and he would leave. Like halfway through the semester he would just start going to his office and then a group would present and then all of the other students would leave comments, critiques, like challenge the group and the group would just have to stand up there and fend off the comments.
Oh, my gosh. It was so crazy. And I learned so much. Like when I first started out, I was like, I hate this.
Ava: I mean, that’s fair. It’s really intimidating and learning how to, like, essentially get peppered with criticism every single day you’re there is a lot.
Sydney: Yeah yeah. And some people were way better at it. And I was like, I’m just standing up here. I’m going to read something out and someone’s going to go “Uh…” And I’m like, Oh.
But by the end of the semester, everyone had gotten sort of into the groove of it and everyone started to like, respect each other’s colleagues. So it was all very respectful and it was really cool. I didn’t expect it to turn out like that but it did.
Ava: That’s awesome. So then what made you write a thesis specifically in English? Because like you have three departments to choose from here. Tell me about that process for you.
Sydney: So for my English thesis, I’ve always loved creative writing and I was coming in and when I learned what a thesis was, I was like, If I can spend the semester working on a like, full draft of a novel and finishing up a novella and take it for a course credit, I was like I’ll absolutely do that. Especially because for me, like having deadlines, like grades and accountability is the only way I’ll get anything done.
Ava: Yeah, So, so true. If you, if you keep something in secret, if you keep yourself on a deadline in secret, it will never happen. It takes way more discipline than you might need to do it.
Sydney: Yeah, definitely, if I’m not getting like an email, like where are the pages you need to submit? I’m just not going to do them. So that was really great.
I pitched my idea last spring, a busy spring, and then the department was like, sure, go for it. And I’ve been writing it since. It’s been awesome.
Ava: Are you willing to tell the world a little bit about it?
Sydney: Absolutely. It’s a creative fiction novella. It’s a realistic fiction piece. And it is about this young woman and her friends in New York. And the whole thing is that they’re like super morally bankrupt. It’s sort of like something that I noticed in high school in coming to college, that there was this rise in activism amongst the college population and people at Amherst and other places.
But a lot of it was very performative, you know, you’re putting 80 GoFundMe links on your Instagram story and that’s all you’re doing. And then you’re not even thinking about the cause or anything like that. So the story kind of stems from that and like exploring what it means to be super wealthy in New York and in these social activist groups that are also actively being one of the people where change needs to happen, being part of the class that needs to change.
So yeah, at a very high level, it’s like a critique on elitism, that type of thing.
Ava: That is really, really cool. When is it due? Are you almost done?
Sydney: I’m done with the first draft. I think it was 193 pages when I finished. It was really hard. It was quite long. But we cut it to about ten pages and it’s like 183. And it’s due in April, early April.
Ava: Okay, okay. Coming up. So you’re getting there. Yeah, I’m sure you’re I’m sure you’re going to celebrate when it’s turned in and it’s over and you have this lovely, beautiful published piece and then you go, okay, I can read it now. I don’t have to work on this ever again.
Sydney: Yeah, I’m excited to write the acknowledgments and then close the doc and be done.
Ava: Wow. Okay, so you’re in your last couple months of college. I’m in my last couple of months of college. World, that’s scary, but it’s cool. Also, scary.
How are you feeling? What’s going through your mind right now? Is there anything you could also tell current or future students about what this feels like or the process going through college feels like?
Sydney: Totally. Yeah, it feels good. I am excited. I’m excited for New York. I’m psyched to be going there. I think Amherst was everything that I needed it to be when I first got out of high school.
When I came out of high school, I was like, I want a small liberal arts college in the middle of nowhere so I could just be in this little insulated bubble. And I think it started to feel like an insulated bubble, you know? I feel that. I love the community here because of how small and like, tight-knit it is. And I’m excited to go see the big city and meet like so many, instead of 2000, you know, 2 million people. Not that I’d meet 2 million people, but you know, meet-and-greet.
Ava: I think something that I’ve noticed, too, in just in terms of how Amherst prepares you is like Amherst quite literally prepares you for life after college because a lot of times what you do see or you do hear like the narrative that, you know, your life ends when college is over and it becomes just sort of like this lonely, open expansive time.
And it’s just work and life and sleep and then maybe a little bit of social time in between. And that’s kind of the narrative we’ve been fed our whole lives, which really sucks when you’re a senior, you’re like, oh, okay, so this is what everyone’s telling me. Yikes.
But at the same time too, I feel like Amherst is very good at preparing you to be excited for your future and making it into something really beautiful. Whereas I feel like maybe at other schools, etc., people like to live in those past years. And here, I mean, you can definitely cherish things for what they are, but it feels nice to kind of outgrow your box a little bit.
And to get to outgrow your box a little bit because it allows you to love your time here and be excited for another time as well. There’s this dual kind of nostalgia and bittersweet excitement.
Sydney: I think for Amherst, with how everyone lives on campus, for example, the one dining hall, all of that, you know, as a sophomore I was like, oh gosh, I wish I could live in an apartment. But now that I’m a senior, it’s like, I’m glad I got to do this for four years and I’m looking forward to doing those things for the rest of my life, you know?
Ava: I tell my friends who go to schools much bigger than this one and I’m like, yeah, so you know, I live above the dining hall and we have one dining hall and I have a room and my car is parked very far away from me and that is all.
And they’re like, oh gosh, are you okay? And I’m like, you know, honestly, it’s really nice. Yeah. It’s great. And I cannot tell you how excited I will be to, you know, live in an apartment, pay utilities. So excited to pay utilities.
And they’re like, are you serious? And like, well, yeah, that’s kind of part of it. You have to romanticize the little things because I guess the little things here too you can really cherish as well.
Sydney: Yeah, totally. Like I get it. We get all our meals cooked for us. We get our dorms cleaned like three times a week.
Ava: Thank you Val. Thank you custodial staff. Thank you, thank you guys. Actually. Thank you guys so much.
Sydney: You are the best. But yeah. So feeling good, feeling excited. I know the day graduation comes up, I know commencement comes up I’m going to be a wreck.
Ava: Do you want to tell the world what you’re going to be up to after graduation?
Sydney: So after graduation, I’ll be at Microsoft in New York. I’m going to be a software engineer. So I think that’s part of the post-grad excitement. I’ve got something lined up going on there. I’m psyched. I’m really excited.
I really like Microsoft. I’ve done a couple of summers with them. I was a vendor for them my freshman summer through another program, and then I worked for them my sophomore and junior summer in a professional capacity.
Ava: Oh my gosh. So like a legacy intern, like you were embedded in the family.
Sydney: Yeah, one-hundred percent. Four different emails from every summer I worked there.
Ava: That is wild. That is so cool. Now what specific team will you be working on while you were in New York and how does it differ from what you’ve done in past summers?
Sydney: I’m actually not sure what team I’m going to be working on yet. I know it’ll be in Azure, which is cloud computing, which I think is one of their biggest orgs.
In recent years, I’ve been sort of in Azure Storage. So like the files and stuff like up in the cloud and like managing them.
My first summer, I was working on, I guess my second summer, my first summer working in Redmond where Microsoft is, I was working on migrating files to the cloud. And then my second summer I was working on managing storage in the cloud. So very similar things. And I’m thinking of something similar in New York, but we’ll see.
Ava: That’s so cool. Now, okay, so you have been able to work for Microsoft since essentially your very first summer in college? What was the process of working for them, getting such a wonderful job like that for such a prestigious organization? Can you walk us through what that process looked like?
Sydney: Totally, yeah. So my freshman fall, I was pretty convinced that over the summer I was just going to like, do whatever. I really wanted to work at Chipotle, which is what I will be doing this summer, actually, in between graduation and going to Microsoft.
But it was like winter break, I think. And I was like, well, actually, I know I want to do computer science full time. Why spend a summer not doing an internship if I can get one?
I think I was taking the Amtrak out from D.C. or something and I was working on interview prep and sending applications. And for undergrad or underclassmen like freshmen/sophomore, there are a whole bunch of programs specifically for freshmen/sophomore that have a lower barrier to entry. Those interviews are a lot easier and those are like UberSTAR, Google STEP, Microsoft Explore, the New Technologist program, which is what I did, and then a handful of others.
And so, yeah, I just got back up to campus. I started doing interviews. I bombed a couple of interviews. I learned why. It’s part of the process.
Definitely had a few Zoom calls that would ended and I’d go, ugh, that was bad.
Ava: What are some things that you’ve kind of learned through that interview trial and error process that you think helped you gain confidence in being able to put out a good interview?
Sydney: Yeah, I think that I was in the beginning a little bit too focused on getting the right answer to problems and not having a good rapport with my interviewer, which I think in my later interviews as I went to interview directly with Microsoft and with a couple of other companies. I think getting along with your interviewer, having really good behavioral skills is so underrated.
Especially in tech, you know, because there’s this whole process of doing LeetCode which are these puzzle problems that you do in interviews. And I mean, it’s really intense. If you fail at the question, but you still get along really well with your interviewer and you’re able to explain your thought process and give cohesive, detailed insight into what you’re thinking, I mean, that’s kind of the main thing.
Well, I’ve definitely never not written optimized code in an interview. I definitely have. But like in the times that I have and still done really well and moved on to different rounds, it’s always been because me and the interviewer are talking about a TV show.
Ava: For sure. Something that I’ve noticed is that obviously, you know, going to Amherst is such a wonderful privilege and it will set you up with a wonderful education and a good life beyond that. No matter where you go or what you end up doing. But something that’s so important when you enter the real world, because this is our fake world, is how important those soft social skills are.
And being able to get along and work in a team, or naturally network with people within these groups that you’re working with or working for is what’s going to help you so much in life and also create so many of the connections that make post-grad life fun and interesting.
And something that I think that an advantage of Amherst is, is how small it is. You are forced to see everyone you may like or dislike every day all the time. You can’t hide away in your little dining hall, like tucked away in the dining hall with your headphones in or whatever. You will see people that you know all the time. And as annoying as small talk can be sometimes, on the best of days, it’s kind of nice and on the worst of days it can really suck.
But it really teaches you to have that banter that you talk about with people, and that’s really important.
Sydney: Yeah, absolutely. I was terrible at small talk before coming to college. I mean, I’d, like, never done it in high school. I had me and my four friends and like, the part of the cafeteria we ate in and that was it.
And then getting to Amherst and it’s like, okay, here’s everyone in the freshman class. There are 500 of us. We could fit in a large auditorium together. And I will see you guys every day for the next four years. If I’m in Val, I will see you. And it’s like there’s always some weirdness where it’s, like, someone who maybe you were really close with your first week and now you’re juniors and you like, spot each other and you’re like mmm?
Ava: It’s like the hi factor. What version of Hello are you on? Are you on the always hello? Are you on the I’ll give you a hug? Are you on the sometimes hello? Or is it like the really weird eye contact and the White people smile?
Like what’s the level that you’re on?
Sydney: Totally, totally yeah. Like is it the I’m looking at my phone and scrolling through the weather app because I don’t know if I should look up. Do I have to pretend not to look at you?
But yeah, I learned a lot. Just like being in such close proximity you’re going to have to figure out how to have small talk with everyone, how to chit chat with everyone. If you want to go to Val at 6:30, like you’re going to see everyone there.
Ava: For sure. Absolutely. That’s really important. I feel like we don’t talk about it enough here.
And as we’re kind of running low on time and with all you know and all the wisdom that you gained over these years and your three majors and many jobs and Microsoft internships, what is some parting advice you would have for some students here?
Sydney: I would say that you should always be thinking about what you want your life to look like, even just in some capacity, like all the time. Even if it’s just like, you know, you’re a freshman and you’re like, I could see myself firefighting, I don’t know, in like the middle of Colorado, something random like that.
It’s always going to lead you to something. Like if you start going down that path even a little bit, you’re going to find things about yourself out. And also you’re going to stumble onto other things that might be cool. Like you look into firefighting jobs, and you’re like, I can’t do that. But I do think that’s cool. But like, I care about the environment.
So you take an environmental studies class and oh, I really like this professor, you’re doing research now. And like those little things, just exploring the threads that your brain gives to you.
You know, I think that people are very intuitive about the things that they like. And if you have an idea of something you can see yourself doing, there’s a reason for it. So explore it even a little bit.
I would have never thought that I could get into philosophy, but I had this thought that I was like, okay, well, I like this class. And I think that ethics are cool. And, you know, maybe I’ll look up the Wikipedia article for the word philosophy and see if anything sticks. And it just leads you to such amazing places. So always trust your intuition.
Ava: That is so cool. And that is great advice.
I often feel that when you follow the path of least resistance, not that it’s not going to be a difficult path, but the path that just tends to have the least amount of energetic friction is the one that you’re kind of meant to go down. And things always end up falling into place. It’s funny like that, but it always happens for whatever reason.
Well, thank you so much for coming in. It’s been wonderful.
