Hey everybody! My name is Caitlin Easter, and I am the newest addition to the UMKC Women’s Center staff!
I was born and raised in a small town called Warsaw here in Missouri. If you have heard of it, or it sounds familiar, it’s probably due to it being right on Truman Lake and The Lake of the Ozarks. I am currently a first-year freshman here at UMKC, but I did manage to get some of the dual credit hours I earned in high school to transfer so I am a little farther ahead. (Yay!)
I have always felt a strong need to help people, and I never knew how I wanted to do that until I got to UMKC. I wasn’t sure how my need to help people was going to transfer into a career, and so I took a super stereotypical route to become a doctor. I decided I wanted to become an ER Trauma Doctor, and I chose to come to UMKC for our fantastic Biology program. Before even starting the first day of the semester, I changed out of all of my classes because I knew Biology just personally wasn’t the best way for me to help people for the rest of my life. Plus, I honestly didn’t think I could bear to learn about cells all over again one more time! After some exploration, I found that maybe the functions of the body that I wanted to learn about were more mind-based. I am currently majoring in Psychology, and have loose plans to develop a career in Psychiatry moving forward.
What specifically interested me about the Women’s Center was their goal to reach equity amongst the genders. I have always been interested in the way gender and sex play into how we are treated, and being a girl, I always felt disparities due to my gender. When I signed up for the Women’s Center’s emails at the beginning of the semester, I wasn’t ready for how much the idea of it would draw me in! The emails I showed me the relentless and constant energy that these people were putting into educating and advocating to make sure I was given a chance to succeed despite what gender norms used to constitute. Once my seasonal job in my hometown ended, I didn’t have any more excuses to not try to become a part of the team! I am looking forward to becoming more knowledgeable about some of the issues facing women, and working with these incredible people to hopefully continue to lay the groundwork for a better place for women in this world. I am looking forward to helping in any way I can, and I am really just excited to get started!