Sarah Elizabeth Porter
Hollins Class Of 2007
Internal Links
The Complete Transcript--The First Interview
The Complete Transcript--The Second Interview
Sarah Porter's Thoughts On The Interview Process
I was born in Washington, DC, in 1985. Like Dr. Wallace, I am the oldest of two--my younger brother, Sam, was born in 1987. Shortly after my brother's birth, my family moved out of the city to New Carrollton, Maryland, where we lived until I was nine years old, at which time we moved to Glen Ellyn, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.
From the time that my father gave me a National Geographic book about the human body when I was about three, I wanted to grow up to be a doctor. I never wavered in this until I got into junior high school, and decided that that was not where my talents lay.
Besides the both of us originally hailing from Maryland, the greatest link between Dr. Wallace and myself has been adoption--as she would put it, we are both members of the adoption community. My mother, Joy Heath, was adopted at birth, in 1959.
Her birth mother, Kathleen Johnston, finally came into contact with her in 2005. As it turned out, I first met Kathleen and her youngest daughter, Samantha (who is only about a year older than I am) just two days after I interviewed Dr. Wallace.
Besides her daughters, Joy and Samantha, Kathleen also has two sons, younger than my mother, who she also gave up for adoption, and only one of whom she has found.
It has been a great shock to have my family grow so much within the past year--because, my mother remarried in 2005, giving me both a stepfather and a nine-year-old stepsister.
When I was sixteen years old, my father packed his bags and, without any advance warning, left the family and moved to the Rocky Mountains of Montana. I have only seen him once since, and am not in regular contact with him.
I am majoring in Film and Photography, and minoring in Women's Studies.