Baltimore Youth Student Stories – Amani Hite

Hello! My name is Amani Hite, and I am a recent graduate of Bowdoin College (’20). I joined Bowdoin Bound 13 years ago as a fourth-grader at Hamilton Elementary/Middle School. Through Bowdoin Bound, I attended Phillip Exeter Academy’s Summer School, a boarding school in New Hampshire. For high school, I graduated from Baltimore City College (’15) in Baltimore, MD. The next year I attended The Loomis Chaffee School (’16), a boarding school in Connecticut, where I completed a Post-Graduate year. After graduating from Loomis Chaffee, I then attended Bowdoin College, graduating in the top five percent of my class with a Bachelor of Arts degree in May 2020.

At Baltimore City College, I was a full-IB student serving as the Class of 2015 President, the track and field captain, and a City College Choir member. I then attended Loomis Chaffee, where I joined the track and field team and was named team captain. During the summer of 2016, I traveled to Umbria and Rome, Italy, where I studied Renaissance art history and created acrylic, oil, and watercolor paintings. Following my year at Loomis, I began my undergraduate studies at Bowdoin College. At Bowdoin, I majored in Visual Arts and minored in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies. I served as the president of the largest student-run organization on campus, The Black Student Union, sprinted on the indoor and outdoor track and field team, and curated the first black women art exhibition titled ” … AND SHE’S A BLACK WOMAN.”

Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Interns, 2018

Additionally, I interned at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art as a communications assistant, served as a teacher’s assistant in the digital media lab of our visual arts department, worked for the schools I.T. department as a technical support assistant, and assisted artists in a nearby art gallery in Bath, Maine as the lead studio assistant.

My Bowdoin Bound experience meant that I gained exposure to worldly educational offerings that expanded far beyond the city of Baltimore. In my first year in Bowdoin Bound, as a fourth grader, I was told that I could go to any college in the country as long as I applied myself in school with my studies and set my mind to it. I did not think that school outside of Maryland was an option for me but hearing as a young child that I could study and travel on my own one day was a dream that I knew I had to make a reality. Every summer, I would look forward to staying on a real college campus, in college dorms outside Baltimore. Visiting colleges in the New England area was very new to me. I learned about liberal arts schools versus universities, grants/scholarships versus loans, and need-based blind financial aid through Bowdoin Bound. Through visiting many colleges, I was taught the importance of researching schools before taking a campus tour and prepping questions to asking after the tour. I learned how to 1) get as much feedback in the short period as possible, and 2) not ask questions that were answerable by visiting the school’s website. Being apart of Bowdoin Bound and being exposed to far more than I ever imagined I had access to is the reason why I can adapt to any space that I find myself in. I can learn and ask questions without feeling like an outsider, even when I may not look the same as my counterparts. I can also try new things and fail to try that same thing again and succeed the next time around. I know that I am not what society says I am because of Bowdoin Bound. I know that I am not just what the world has to offer me but also what I have to offer the world because I am preceptive in the classroom, intuitive in my leadership style, fearless when taking risks, and a big dreamer because small dreams are not enough.

Because of Bowdoin Bound, I am confident in myself when navigating this world that we call home. In the words of the great American novelist, Toni Morrison, “What’s the world for if you can’t make it up the way you want it?”