October 30, 2018 | By Kimberly Uslin

Kelsey Miller (A10) nearly didn’t come to St. John’s because it seemed too good to be true.

She sent the college her PSAT scores on the recommendation of a high school teacher, but didn’t think much of it. When college literature began pouring in, she was struck by the St. John’s pamphlet.

“At first I thought it wasn’t real,” she says. “I still remember standing by the front door [looking at it] and there were these pictures of people reading books on the front, as opposed to playing sports or doing science experiments. I leafed through the pamphlet, which was all about the discussion-based classes and how everyone’s really serious about what they’re learning.”

“It just seemed like paradise, and I didn’t know if it was a scam,” she remembers, laughing. “I almost threw the pamphlet in the trash because I thought ‘This can’t possibly be real.’”

Despite her skepticism, she arranged a visit to campus. It was everything she’d hoped for in a college.

“I had an amazing time. I felt like I fit in immediately and that I had found people who care about the same things that I did and were willing to work really hard to get there. That felt amazing. When my mom came to pick me up, I cried because I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to have to go back to high school for almost a year.”

From that point forward, her mind was made up. When her acceptance letter came with her financial aid award, she said, “it basically felt like a Hogwarts letter. It just felt absolutely magical.”

Her undergraduate experience was equally idyllic.

“I knew it’s where I wanted to be, and I basically spent the next four years confirming that every single day. I was doing the things I cared about, I was growing, I was building friendships that are super meaningful … ”

At the same time, however, Miller was cultivating a life beyond campus. As a creative person involved in both visual and performing arts, she became involved with the Maryland Federation of Art and pursued pottery, painting, sculpture and more.

“There was this question of the importance of the arts in this really rigorous academic program,” she says. “I was digging deep into what makes life valuable. I remember my first oral my freshman year about The Republic, and I was basically asking why Socrates outlawed the arts from the Republic.”

The question continued to fascinate her. She took a preceptorial on Friedrich Schiller’s “On the Aesthetic Education of Man,” determined to unite her two worlds.

“I felt this draw to try to answer that question for myself because I felt I was living two different lives: one, the academic person in the classroom, and the other this totally different creature that I almost felt guilty for, because Socrates said this is not the part of myself that I should really be feeding—that the arts are a distraction.”

The preceptorial, she says, “totally changed her world.” She wrote her senior essay on the role of beauty and art in human nature, and, still not fully believing she had exhausted the topic, pursued aesthetics and the philosophy of art at England’s University of Southampton. While shifts within the university slightly altered her course, she remained driven by the same essential questions: “What is art and why are we drawn to it? What does it mean for our lives? Is it something we should be afraid of, or is it something that we should run after with all we have?”

Having written her master’s thesis on Hegel, she spent the months following refinishing antique furniture and working with the nonprofit Historic Annapolis. She was drawn, however, to teaching. A chance run-in with some other SJC alumni sent her on the path to South Korea, where she taught for a year. After the term was up, however, she sought something less strict, with more room for the Johnnie-like education she’d experienced.

“I went again to the alumni Facebook group and asked people what their experiences had been. One of them connected with me and ended up saying ‘Oh, I have a friend who has a school in Thailand. I wonder if she’s looking for teachers this year.”

She was, and Miller was soon on her way.

“I spent the next two years in Thailand, about two-and-a-half hours south of Bangkok. It was beautiful and wonderful. I was able to jump on and try the Socratic method, and they were really open to that, which was really empowering. That was fantastic, to be able to basically start a little Johnnie revolution in the middle of Thailand.”

Still, however, Miller couldn’t shake her interest in the philosophy of arts and creativity. She decided to pursue a second master’s, this time at the University of Cambridge—and, coincidentally, at the St. John’s College there.

“It was a master’s of education, but focusing on art, creativity, and culture,” she says. “My program was amazing. It absolutely was the interdisciplinary discussion I was looking for.”

She used her time at the other St. John’s to research the efficacy of varied teaching styles, resulting in a statistically significant conclusion about the power of divergent thinking in encouraging creative potential in students.

“If you invite students to think more openly, then they’re going to be able to come up with ideas that people haven’t thought of before,” she says. “I got to prove that.”

She spent two years working at a private school in Santa Barbara, California doing “some really exciting stuff with inquiry-based teaching,” but decided that she was ready to pursue a new challenge.

Which led her, once again, to St. John’s—this time, to the Santa Fe campus, where she applied for a position with alumni relations.

“I fell in love with the people here,” she says. “They were absolutely amazing and passionate and you could just tell that everyone was really excited to move forward with this next phase in the college’s history. When they offered me the job, it was an immediate yes.”

Now, she serves as a Senior Alumni Engagement & Giving Officer with the college—feeling, again, like it might just be a dream come true.

“Even though I had only been [to the Santa Fe campus] once before, it felt like home.”