Trent grad trades banks of Otonabee for shores of Potomac

Kerry Colpitts has to keep pinching herself to prove she's not dreaming.

Two years ago, she graduated from Trent University, "wondering what I was going to do with my life. I had an English degree, plus a couple of courses in Canadian politics, with a burning passion for two things ­ reading and politics."

This morning, as she has daily for the last three months, Colpitts headed off for work at the Republican National Committee office in Washington, D.C. as deputy press secretary for online services. At age 24, she is "amazed" to have made it to such a prestigious position as a first real job, "and in a presidential election year to boot."

On a typical day Colpitts is in the office before 8 a.m. scanning on-line news sources and keeping in close touch with key Internet reporters.

So how did she get from here to there? After graduating, and on the advice of Robert Campbell, the political studies professor "who walks on water as far as I'm concerned, I enrolled in Public Administration at Queen's. While there I wrote an essay on the Reagan doctrine. One of the people I interviewed became a close friend and through him I established contacts in Washington." Her job offer came in January of this year. Colpitts hopes her Washington experience will eventually lead her back to Ottawa.

When Trent Report spoke with Colpitts, her office was just preparing to launch a new Web site to help support their goal of helping Republicans get elected "from the courthouse to the White House." Politics, she has discovered, is an entirely different game in the U.S. than it is in Canada. "It's rougher and more cutthroat."

During her time at Trent, medical problems put Colpitts in touch with the special needs office. "They were so good to me. It is amazing what the centre does for students - above and beyond anything I know of at other schools. I tell people that if they have a student with special needs, they should send that student to Trent if for no other reason than the support they will receive. I have friends with learning disabilities and physical challenges who have gone to Trent and the assistance they received was incredible."

Colpitts says her job market experience helps point out the value of a liberal arts education, "proving that a liberal arts degree can get you anywhere you want to go."

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