by Madeleine Farr | Special to the Courier

As perhaps the world’s leading city in cultural and economic opportunities, New York consistently hosts many Claremont Colleges students looking to develop their passions and careers. This year is no exception.

Students across the Claremont Colleges have displayed their varied interests by applying their talents in several fields. Some have joined New York’s banking, finance, real estate, and wealth management scenes; others have flexed their humanities muscles, interning at art studios and local newspapers.

Maya Raphael is a rising junior at Pitzer College who interned at Columbia University in a newer industry: AI fluency.

Raphael, who calls Portland, Oregon, home, spent two months living in Brooklyn and commuting to the Teachers College Digital Future Institute. She and her mentors were working to launch a research initiative that could help distinguish between “AI fluency” and “AI literacy.”

“Literacy is narrow, foundational knowledge and basic use of chat bots, and then fluency is being able to assess an output and see if [it’s] reliable,” Raphael said. She said breaking past AI literacy into AI fluency, and subsequently establishing a distinction between the two, is important in creating curricula and training educators.

Raphael, who is majoring in cognitive science at Pitzer, said she appreciated how her work touched on many topics covered by her major’s interdisciplinary nature, including technology, psychology, neuroscience, and linguistics. Pitzer also provided her with a stipend, given her internship was unpaid, which alleviated the financial burden of living in New York City.

Rising Claremont McKenna College senior Sansriki Kumar, an economics and international relations major, said striking the appropriate work-life balance was a challenge she embraced working in corporate finance and restructuring practice at FTI Consulting.

“I’m originally from Connecticut, so I’ve absolutely loved living in the city,” Kumar said. “I’ve always kind of wanted to try out New York and see if I liked it.”

Living and studying in Claremont made it easier to maintain consistent social interaction, Kumar said, but New York pushed her to learn how to carve out time for herself and her loved ones.

“Whether you’re going out or whether you’re eating in a new restaurant or you’re going to an art gallery after work one day with your friends, there’s just so much to do,” she said.

Otto Fritton, a rising junior at Pitzer College, worked at New York newspaper company Straus News this summer. Born and raised in Manhattan, his challenges differed from those of Raphael and Kumar.

“Working in New York City is always a really good chance to see where you stack up and where you fall behind and how you can improve on that,” he said.

Straus News publishes 17 newspapers across New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Fritton wrote for each of the four biggest papers they publish in New York City, focusing on local news stories that wouldn’t get picked up by worldwide publications such as the New York Times.

“Being in New York helped me retain momentum when I wasn’t getting paid,” Fritton said. “Being in a hyper competitive atmosphere and loving my boss, and loving what I was doing, helped a lot, made me want to get better.”

Like Kumar and Raphael, Fritton’s academic endeavors and extracurricular interests were bolstered by his summer work experience. An editor at the Claremont Colleges’ newspaper The Student Life, he is a history major looking to pursue a career in journalism.

Claremont Colleges students will begin returning to campus in just a few short weeks. In the meantime, students like Raphael, Kumar and Fritton are wrapping up their summer experiences and looking ahead.

“I’ve loved it … but I’m so excited to go back to Claremont,” Kumar said. “Claremont’s my favorite place in the world.”

Madeleine Farr, a rising Pitzer College junior studying politics and writing, is senior news editor at the Claremont Colleges student newspaper The Student Life.