Katy Siddall is going places.

“I see myself living it up while I’m young and not being confined to a single career,” she said. “Eventually I want to be a lawyer and a professor, and I’ll stay politically active.”

Siddall is a senior psychology and political science major, and she’s already proven her versatility within Simpson’s community. Currently, she’s the chief editor of the Sequel, an LAS assistant for Intro to Ethics, a member of Pi Beta Phi and a regular volunteer at the Refugee Cooperative in Des Moines.

While she enjoys staying busy, she’s careful not to do too much at one time.

“I’m not involved in as much right now as I have been in the past,” Siddall said. “When I’m in something I give it my all; I don’t like to spread myself too thin.”

That doesn’t stop her from taking opportunities when they come her way though. Siddall spent last semester interning in Washington, D.C., with U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell. She was later offered a summer job in the congressman’s Des Moines, which she gladly accepted.

She’s not done traveling either. Siddall was one of the first two students to sign up for the fall-break trip to hurricane-damaged Mississippi. The trip filled up in less than five minutes, so Siddall is excited to be part of it.

“You watch the news and you want to go down there, but you just don’t have the means,” she said. “Then, all of a sudden, you’re given the means. How can you turn that down?”

This interest in helping others shows in Siddall’s day-to-day life. She’s an intent listener who takes time to consider her words before she speaks. According to Siddall, she enjoys working with people to overcome obstacles.

She recently put her listening and understanding skills to use when she taught four Sudanese women to count money at the Refugee Cooperative. Just one of the women was fluent in English.

“At first I thought she was translating for them, but I figured out that she was actually just answering for them,” Siddall said. “So I gave her a separate project to work on and continued working with the other three.”

Siddall is usually willing to try something new, and said every student should do the same.

“Take classes you don’t think you’ll need,” she said. “You can learn so much about yourself.”