Macy Lipkin ’23 has been thinking about Wellesley for a long, long time. “My sixth grade science teacher went to Wellesley—Cindy Krol ’02—and I practically wanted to be her, so naturally I decided when I was 11 that I was going to come here, too,” she says.

Lipkin, a peace and justice studies major, grew up in nearby Framingham, Mass., and confesses that she “kind of made some appearances on campus throughout the years.”

When Hurricane Sandy canceled her public school classes but Wellesley stayed in session, she and her mother drove to campus for a look. “It happened to be Tanner Tuesday, so I came to Tanner.”

She made another foray onto campus to attend an open house for high school juniors—though she was only in eighth grade. “I went to this theater class, and the professor was like, ‘OK, so you’re all juniors,’ and I was, like, ‘This is awkward,’” she remembers. Later on, her mother was talking to Joy St. John, dean of admission and financial aid, at the luncheon, who said, “Oh, you’re the mom of the eighth grader!”

In high school, Lipkin did consider other places. “I almost interviewed at Scripps because I hate the cold. But in the end, it was Wellesley,” she says.

Lipkin has kept in touch with her sixth grade science teacher from time to time. “I’ll email her once a year. She actually was on the crew team, like me. Last fall, I emailed her, ‘Hey, are you coming to watch?’ And she ended up watching Head of the Charles with one of my friends from down the hall.”

Lipkin took a gap year after high school, living in Ecuador through a program called Global Citizen Year. While there, she interned at a public radio station. Lipkin speaks Spanish fluently as a result of participating in the Framingham public schools’ Two-Way Bilingual Program. “I started learning Spanish in kindergarten,” Lipkin says. “And I complained about it, of course, until I was 15, probably. But then, I got good at it, and it’s just really fun to practice and really fun to keep it up.”

After Ecuador, she threw herself into being a Wellesley first-year. “We had a good run, up until we got sent home in March 2020,” she says.

Lipkin’s voice has been heard often on campus: She writes a regular blog for the admission office, and for two years she worked as a student reporter and photographer for the College’s communications and public affairs office. She’s also a frequent contributor of both news and opinion writing for the Wellesley News.

Last fall, Lipkin was a news intern for Connecticut Public Radio. One Friday afternoon, a piece she reported for the station aired on public radio in Boston.

“I made my WBUR debut! It was about research out of the University of Rhode Island on rising sea levels and increased storms,” she says. “It’s about one minute long, saying we have to look at these two things together, because rising sea is exacerbating the impacts of increased storms.”

Connecticut Public Radio hosts the New England News collaborative, a group of nine public radio stations in New England—which is how Lipkin’s piece ended up on WBUR.

“I was in bio when it aired,” she says. “I found out it was on from my crew coach, who heard it live. It’s so exciting. It’s so cool, because I think eventually that’ll just be a thing that I do—make stories [for] the radio. But right now, this will always be what I remember as my first U.S.-based radio story.”

Lipkin hoped to head back to Ecuador for the spring semester with IES Abroad and its GAIAS Galápagos program. “It’s been almost three years. I want to go see my host family. And I’m excited to go back and know what I’m doing this time. And to be in the Galápagos—most people don’t get to go there.”

For her future, Lipkin dreams about a public radio job. “If I had to have a beat, I feel like I could totally do environment, climate change. But I’m also really interested in education and covering schools. Maybe not school board meetings—but I’ll need a job!”

For someone who has been thinking about Wellesley since middle school, contemplating being a senior feels strange. “I started telling first-years that the time here goes by so fast. I know I sound like a grandma, but I’m like, ‘Really, it goes by so fast,’” she says.