Palmer Harston was on a spring break trip visiting relatives in Nashville when her family was involved in a terrible car wreck. Eight-year-old Palmer was airlifted to Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital, where she underwent emergency surgeries to save her life and was a patient for months. Her injuries left her confined to a wheelchair. Years later, her memories of the life-saving treatment she received at Vanderbilt led her to apply for college here. This May, she graduates as a double major in political science and human and organizational development, and then leaves for Africa to spend a year working with AIDS orphans.
Harston, the recipient of a prestigious Ingram scholarship, has excelled in the classroom and as a role model and mentor while a student at Vanderbilt.
"I’ve never really given people a chance to question my abilities," Harston said by cell phone while traveling with friends on a pre-graduation trip to the beach. "I just kind of jump in. It’s a survival mechanism I learned a long time ago. My parents instilled in me that I could do anything I put my mind to and not to let anyone tell me I can’t do something. I had people around me – friends and faculty – who gave me a chance and believed in me."
That’s why the prospect of spending a year in one of the poorest areas of South Africa is not the least bit daunting for her. She spent the past two summers doing service work in Africa – first in Mozambique and then in South Africa – which gave her a desire to go back for a lengthier stay. She’ll live and work for the next year at the Lily of the Valley AIDS orphanage in Kwa Zulu Natal near Durbin, South Africa, an area with the second highest AIDS population in the world and one of the highest child abandonment rates, Harston said.
She’ll spend her days on HIV education and testing with the 150 orphans living in the village. She also will work with widows of AIDS victims. Her involvement will extend as well to community development micro-financing – not on the loan side, but helping people with loans develop projects. In her spare time, she plans to take classes in Zulu.
"It will be great break from writing papers all day," she quipped.
"I want to do international law, so I think this will be a great hands-on experience," Harston said. She has taken the LSATs and will drop her law school applications in the mail before she heads to South Africa.
"There’s a small niche of international law called adoption law. There are not enough people in the field who basically help parents who want to adopt. International adoption is a really crazy process because countries have to have laws that match up," she said.
Harston said her service learning experiences at Vanderbilt coupled with her classroom work gave her a passion for helping others. She cited the service learning class she took with Peabody Special Education Professor Carolyn Hughes as a prime example. "We were able to take and apply our coursework to the community and see an impact and have an academic base as well," Harston said.
Harston was paired with three teenagers from Maplewood High in a mentoring program aimed at encouraging high-need students to apply to college. She ended up extending her mentoring program for the entire academic year rather than the planned semester. "We felt one of the biggest problems with these kids is that they had people who would come in and out of their lives. We didn’t want to perpetuate that by doing the exact same thing to them," she said.
Harston values the variety of experiences she’s had at Vanderbilt. "I’m so glad that I got involved in so many different areas on campus. I joined a sorority and a Christian campus ministry and I went on Alternative Spring Break for three years. I tried a lot of different things. That’s something I’ll look back and be so glad that I did. I can’t rave enough about my Vanderbilt experience. "
She took one of her hardest and most rewarding classes from Rodelio Manacsa, professor of political science, who said Harston was never satisfied with doing "good enough" in class.
"I admired Palmer’s intense focus in class. She believed the class material was important, but that great effort would be required to do well. And indeed, for 15 weeks, her focus never wavered. She received one of the highest marks in my class, completing it with considerable distinction," he said.
"She is certainly one of my students that I will remember. For educators like me, we are thankful for the opportunity to teach, and learn, from blessings like Palmer," Manacsa said.
And no one can say that Harston was afraid to try something new as a Vanderbilt student. "Any time anyone tells me I can’t do something, it just motivates me further."
For more news about Vanderbilt, visit the News Service homepage at www.vanderbilt.edu/news.
Media Contact: Jennifer Johnston (615) 322-2706
Jennifer.johnston@vanderbilt.edu