Cory Adkins
B.N. Duke
2013
Hometown:
Pfafftown, NC
Highschool:
Forsyth Country Day School
Major:
At the time of this writing, Cory is a Trinity freshman who arrived at Duke very far away from deciding what he might like to study, and, after a semester of hard-work and self-reflection, has successfully moved even farther away from any such decision.
Although Cory has aspired to careers as varied as poet, sailor and vigilante crime fighter, his interests have for the moment settled on social entrepreneurship and political interaction. Cory is particularly interested in using social and cultural institutions to solve hard problems in human behavior. If he turns out to lack the creativity for such endeavors, well, there is always the business press.
In his spare time, Cory enjoys writing, photography and news. He will consume anything which promises to contain ‘the great ideas,’ whether Tocqueville or tabloid, but, it must be said, is predisposed towards things printed on thick and/or glossy paper.
As for biography, Cory spent half of his youth in Delaware, Pennsylvania and Illinois (with his brother, coincidentally) and the other half pining to return. As such, he is a somewhat unlikely Duke student. Ultimately, Cory was drawn to Duke by its institutional chutzpah -- the combination of the youthful vigor of a university younger than his great grandmother and the muscle of a major research institution. At Duke, problems are not addressed within disciplinary silos but with the full arsenal of human knowledge. This, combined with an institutional attitude of ‘do better or die trying’ that seeps down into administrators, professors, students and even the bustling Research Triangle region itself, proved irresistible for the boy who once dreamed of becoming an maritime crime fighter.
So far, Duke has not disappointed: somewhere between scarfing down a pork rind bigger than his face for prize money, doing interior design for a Durham non-profit, talking about Heidegger’s Nazism with professors and discussing Pre-Raphaelite poetry on the East-West bus, Cory managed to discover both a university and a region that are much richer than he first gave them credit for. And of course, it is always nice to see his professor's books on the shelves at Borders.
As for the BN Duke program, Cory realizes that it has become all too chic in higher education to label a group as a "community of scholars," although this would not be a misnomer. However, as a one-time Pennsylvanian, he would like to offer a different label: a society of friends. Although there is nary a Quaker among them, the BN bunch remains an unlikely cohort, drawn together by some inexplicable force and a common will for the good. The program itself opens up the often difficult to navigate channels to this good, whether through providing interesting internships, opportunities to study abroad, or advice for activities on campus.
Here’s to a happy new semester! — December, 2009
Awards and Honors:
If you remain unconvinced that Cory is an interesting person, you should know that, in high school, Cory received the President’s Environmental Youth Award for his work on ‘eco-capitalism’ projects in his local community, received national awards in creative writing, chemistry and science, and led a number of school/community activities and clubs. Academically, he was his high school’s valedictorian, a national AP scholar, and the recipient of numerous departmental awards.