<p>(article excerpt)</p>
<p>"When it came time to decide on a college, Tracy never gave it much thought. </p>
<p>Her parents were from New Jersey and during a road trip there when she was 12, they decided to visit Princeton. She loved the imposing stone buildings and the ivy. </p>
<p>It felt so collegiate, she said. It looked so collegiate. So she applied early decision and was accepted by December of her senior year. </p>
<p>I never looked back, she said. </p>
<p>It proved to be a great fit for many reasons for the opportunity to spread her wings across the country from her family and for establishing herself as intelligent in an entire class of valedictorians and editors of yearbooks. </p>
<p>Among them she found friends such as Kim Reisler, whom she met during freshman year move-in day. </p>
<p>From that first day, I knew there was just sort of this magic in her, Reisler said. Tracys smile and her whole being are so engaging, they just absolutely draw you in. </p>
<p>She remembers Tracy running on a constant sleep deficit, then crashing for entire days at a time. The exhaustion was partly due to her jam-packed social life, but also an equally busy study schedule. </p>
<p>In one of her favorite classes archaeology the professor allowed everyone to touch his collection of historical artifacts. He didnt even mind if she wore his 1,500-year-old jade necklace during his lectures. </p>
<p>Tracy decided at that time to be an archaeologist and spent breaks traveling to countries such as Guatemala and Mexico, conducting research and digging in the dirt. </p>
<p>On one such trip to El Salvador, the site manager stopped her and said, Youre so focused on what was buried in the ground thousands of years ago that you dont even notice the bodies that were buried alive, tortured, or pushed from helicopters more recently. </p>
<p>That was true, she decided. She hadnt given much thought to the civil wars ravaging South and Central America. So from then on, she began examining society, too the root causes of the violence, demonstrations, and protests, as well as their implications. </p>
<p>Her senior thesis shifted from pure archaeology to the politics of archaeology. When Tracy gave a lecture on the topic, Reisler attended. </p>
<p>I was simply awestruck, she said. Ive never been so impressed with someone who was my peer as I was at that moment. </p>
<p>Tracy graduated with a degree in politics in 1989. </p>
<p>Rotary Club International noticed her passion, too, and granted her one of its competitive post-graduation scholarships. "</p>
<p>Full text:</p>
<p>[The</a> Winchester Star](<a href=“http://www.winchesterstar.com/showarticle_new.php?sID=6&foldername=20080927&file=traveler_article.html]The”>http://www.winchesterstar.com/showarticle_new.php?sID=6&foldername=20080927&file=traveler_article.html)</p>