Graduate school didn’t scare Joanna Friedman ’07. The native of Mansfield, Texas, says a big reason she came to Princeton was that the University treats undergraduates like real scholars, requiring them to do original research leading to two junior papers and one substantial senior thesis.

“It isn’t easy to essentially write a book,” laughs Friedman, whose thesis was on the representation of race in Shakespeare’s plays. The thesis-writing process trained her early in the kind of academic discipline necessary to succeed in graduate school and beyond. Friedman, who majored in English with a certificate in linguistics, hopes to one day be a college professor.

Friedman took her Princeton education around the world, spending at least part of every summer abroad. After freshman year, she went to Bordeaux, France, with Princeton’s anthropology department to dig up Neanderthal bones. The next summer, it was a Royal Shakespeare Company program in England. And in the summer of 2006, Friedman took an intensive German language course in Berlin funded by a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship.

In her junior year, Friedman was the president of the Princeton University Debate Panel, the University’s debate team. As president, she oversaw the arrangements for dozens of weekend tournaments, including a trip to the world championships in Dublin, Ireland.

Friedman was also an editor of Princeton Progressive Nation, a student magazine published monthly and delivered to every dorm room on campus. There’s certainly room at Princeton for multiple political voices. Last year, that magazine held a debate among editors from her magazine, the College Democrats, the College Republicans and the Princeton Tory, a conservative student newspaper. As a twist, each side argued from the opposing perspective.

As a junior, Friedman was active in the Policy Research Institute for the Region, a research wing of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs that focuses on issues affecting the New Jersey area. As an undergraduate fellow with the institute, she helped organize a symposium on gang violence, inviting local and state politicians, law-enforcement experts and academics for panel discussions.

Friedman admits that her policy interests are difficult to reconcile with her Shakespeare research, but that’s the beauty of a liberal arts education like Princeton’s. “I think it’s good to be a better-informed person overall,” says Friedman. “If I were constantly studying Renaissance literature, I would probably be woefully unaware of what’s going on in today’s world. It’s good to be balanced.”