For every math and science accomplishment Sidney Richardson has racked up during her four years at Yale, she's had an equally memorable experience outside of her comfort zone.
Co-authoring a scientific study on human interactions with robots? Major achievement. But so was learning to make quilts for Yale New Haven Hospital's neonatal intensive care unit.
Indeed, Richardson's college years took her to both a National Society of Black Engineers conference and an audition for a hip-hop dance group. "That was a wakeup call," she joked about the dance audition. "They firmly rejected me, but I did end up taking salsa lessons in New York, which was amazing."
Richardson, a graduating senior at Pierson College and a native of Kansas City, Missouri, said a STEM focus - particularly computer science and math - was always in the cards for her. She revels in the way that math allows you to see how systems work, and she was a huge fan of her CS50 class, an introductory computing and programming course jointly taught with Harvard.
"Computer science never feels like work to me," she said. "It feels like I'm solving an interesting problem."
She spent one of her summers in New Haven working with the Interactive Machines Group, an interdisciplinary research group led by Yale's computer science department, on a study about how humans respond to robot during a collaborative game; she spent another summer in New York City as a software design intern for Bloomberg (where she'll work full time after graduation).
Yet it was the arts and humanities that led Richardson to choose Yale in the first place. She played the violin in high school, enjoys dancing and the performing arts, and knew she wanted to go to school in a place infused with, and informed by, art and culture. She knew she'd find that here.
And then Yale went and surprised her anyway.
"I remember walking around campus and being sort of astounded by it," she said. "I was caught off-guard. I was also meeting a lot of people who all seemed down to earth and came from so many places. Nepal, Bangladesh, Nigeria. Different backgrounds and experiences. People I'd never have met otherwise."
Over time, Richardson settled in for the time-honored college work of professional and personal discovery. She flourished in her computer science classes, performed with the Yale group Danceworks, and did a ton of mock job interviews.
She became part of the quilting ministry at Saint Thomas More Chapel and completed five quilts; she discovered she could reliably show up at a dining hall and find at least two friends there within a few minutes; she learned that if she needed a quiet space she could visit the Starr Reference Room at Sterling Memorial Library and "really feel like I'm at Yale."
She's a different person from the one who arrived in the autumn of 2022.
"I think I'm more compassionate," she said. "I was a perfectionist coming into college. More self-focused. But navigating friendships and having social relationships teaches you how to be there for other people."
