 By meeting all these other grad students, it really shaped the way that I thought about my own research. It made me think more about how these more abstract ideas that we sometimes think of as very complex, very alien to our lives are actually something that we're all grappling with. My name is Kristen Collins. I am a senior fellow and senior research fellow in the FA Hayek program for advanced study in philosophy, politics, and economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. In my time as an Adam Smith fellow when I was in grad school, I learned so much about all these different academic disciplines that I didn't get to engage with in graduate school like anthropology, economics, computer science, and people from so many different countries from so many intellectual backgrounds with so many different personal perspectives. By meeting all these other grad students, it really shaped the way that I thought about my own research. It made me think more about how these more abstract ideas that we sometimes think of as very complex, very alien to our lives are actually something that we're all grappling with in our own ways. And I really grew as a scholar in my graduate program by virtue of the other experiences that I was having with Mercatus's student programs. Now that I have graduated from grad school and I am a senior fellow in the Hayek program, I continue to learn from other students that participate in our programs. I learned from my colleagues and every day I'm so thankful that I have the opportunity to talk about these complex ideas, these different themes of political, social, and economic thought with people from so many different backgrounds and so many different perspectives so that I can continue to learn about the world and shape my own research in a way that is consistent with the changing nature of our times.