“Studying at Hiram has helped me to explore my different interests, improve my studying skills, and improve my work ethic,” says Max Sloan ’25. With as many interests as she has, including video games, reading, doing makeup, and creative writing, Sloan has found ways to involve herself on campus. Sloan participated in Chamber Singers for two semesters, is the Treasurer for Hiram’s Computer Science Club, and is working over the summer at a job that involves the auto-testing service she used in multiple computer science classes to automatically grade students’ code.

Hiram appealed to Sloan for two reasons: connection and acceptance. Coming from a school with a graduating class of fifty students, Sloan hoped to build relationships with her peers and professors and find an environment where she felt like she belonged. She says, “I am a member of the LGBTQ+ community, and my peers in high school were not the most supportive. Hiram was really just the perfect combination, with a small but incredibly accepting community, and a beautiful campus that appeals to my inner nature-loving self.”

The Covid-19 pandemic forced Sloan to use her computer more than usual during her last two years of high school and because of that, there were multiple times that she had to use advanced and somewhat tedious solutions to fix issues that were not easily solvable. “With the increased use of my computer also came more problems I encountered, and I discovered that I enjoyed the process of fixing them,” she says. Along with her computer science major, Sloan hopes to pursue other studies that she enjoys. “Studying at Hiram has helped me realize that I do not have to restrict myself to just one field of study. For this reason, I also hope to pursue multiple minors, potentially including art & design, performing arts, biology, writing, and possibly others.”

Sloan encourages prospective students to be aware of the challenges of higher education but to not be deterred from pursuing college and the interests they are passionate about. “Hiram has helped me to be a lot more outgoing and open to talking to new people,” she says. “When I began studying at Hiram. I was a very different person. Studying here has helped me realize that improving my skills is not as scary as I thought it would be, and I believe that I have grown a lot in my first two semesters.”