My name is Tori Myers, and I am from Slidell, Louisiana. I am majoring in American Studies with minors in Political Science and Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies.
I started off in Political Science because I heard it was what every pre-law student majored in. However, I decided to take AMS 206, Native American Studies, my sophomore year and instantly loved the material. After that initial AMS course, I decided to speak with Dr. Morgan about what a degree in American Studies would look like with my career goals. I found that most of my interest areas were met within this major, such as my passion for history, politics, the environment, and Native American history studies. One of the best things about the AMS department is the availability of support from the staff and their passion for the subjects. Each professor is very accessible outside of class and wants each student to succeed. A lot of the classes are also discussion based, which gives the student the opportunity to express their ideas without feeling like they are giving the wrong answer. One of my favorite classes that highlighted this was AMS 492. Dr. Odle taught this class, and the students were a mix of undergraduate and graduate students. Even though I didn't have the same skill set as some of my other peers, I still felt encouraged and comfortable to participate in discussions. In this class, we created a poster that looked over the different history and treaties involved with the land that the University of Alabama sits on. I learned more about treaties and laws in this class than I did in some of my other political science courses. I plan on using my degree to continue into law school and hopefully find a program that has both Environmental and American Indian law specializations.