Bindhu Vijayan
B.S. '03, psychology
"My Loyola years were one great learning experience, only making me stronger, wiser and more confident to face other challenges in life."
2003 Loyola University Chicago graduate Bindhu Vijayan adheres to a quote by poet Oscar Wilde who once said, "To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's life. It is no less than a denial of the soul."
"I believe that all my decisions and experiences have shaped the woman that I am today," Vijayan says. The most recent challenge in her life: attending New York Law School in Manhattan, where she concentrates in public advocacy focusing on the South Asian and South Asian American Diaspora. Vijayan, a Loyola psychology major with a minor in political science, says the thought of eventually returning to Chicago to work in international human rights provides her with tremendous internal gratification.
"Working as a lawyer for a non-profit organization in Chicago would be the culmination of my life experiences and my love for people and civil rights," she says. "I am prepared to dedicate myself, as I have in the past, to achieving this goal."
Though her first year of law school was challenging, Vijayan says "the strengths and the ideals I attained as a Loyola undergraduate kept me going." She volunteers with New York's Legal Aid Network for South Asians (LANSA), a hotline for South Asian immigrants who need legal advice, and, with the standard first-year law courses completed, will delve this year into classes on immigration law, domestic violence and poverty law.
During summer 2004, Vijayan was a law clerk in the Child Welfare Litigation Bureau of the Illinois Attorney General's office, adding another layer to her impressive record of service- and community-oriented extracurricular activities. At Loyola, she participated in a number of activities, including as co-founder of the Hindu Students Organization, a member of the South Asian Students Alliance, a mentor for STARS (Students Together Are Reaching Success) and a student dance teacher at the Nataraj Dance Academy. Vijayan also interned with the White House Initiative on Asian American and Pacific Islanders, and with Reducing Employment Discrimination against Immigrants through Education at the Asian Human Services.
"I feel privileged to have graduated from Loyola, with its focus on being a forum for the open exchange of ideas," Vijayan says. "The hallmarks of a Jesuit education, with its emphasis on academic excellence, the importance of the liberal arts and the education of the whole person, have been clearly evident to me."
Throughout the world, Jesuit Catholic education is recognized for building a student's capacities for critical thinking, effective communication and ethical decision-making. In this tradition, an undergraduate education at Loyola University Chicago seeks to expand the horizons of our students' understanding of themselves in relationship to the wider world, while achieving depth of knowledge in a particular field of study.
To learn more about undergraduate education at Loyola, please visit: www.luc.edu/undergrad/.
