“Looking to her has been a way to ground myself amid pressure towards self-aggrandizement,” Stith says. “This orientation comes also from my parents. They are very supportive of academic accomplishment, but they consider caring for others the only real fulfillment in life.”
Stith, one of the notes editors for The Yale Law Journal, is also the director of mentorship for the Hillhouse Scholars Program, in which area students from grades 9-12 are paired with students from Yale’s undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools as sources of guidance, friendship, and inspiration.
While she has not yet decided on the direction she wants to take — “legislator, prosecutor, litigator, professor?” — Stith knows that she wants to use the law “to protect vulnerable people.” She is drawn to criminal law and is intrigued by legal ethics and law and medicine. “In all my classes,” she says “we’re encouraged to think beyond legal preparation. As a conservative Catholic I am often in the ideological minority and appreciate the opportunities we have to discuss honestly and rigorously.”
Always, she returns to her experience in India. “When I wonder what I’m going to do with all this wonderful learning — I remember those handicapped orphans and I know I can relate to those here who have been treated unfairly or damaged by laws that aren’t just. I hope my spirit is big enough to match the need.”