The CUNY Baccalaureate Blog

Kelly Gola: Psychology and Literature, B.A., June 2008; Thomas W. Smith Academic Fellow; Dean’s List.

“My educational history has been a kaleidoscopic array of missteps and accidental fortune. I look back at all of my failures and accomplishments and occasionally indulge the inner self-effacing voice that laments, if I knew then what I know now. However, I would never know what I know now if I hadn’t screwed it up so much then.”

Prior to applying to the CUNY BA Program, Kelly Gola was a hairstylist employed on fashion photo shoots for magazines such as W, Vogue, French Vogue, Italian Vogue and Bizarre, working with the likes of Madonna, Britney Spears, Cameron Diaz and Muhammad Ali. “I looked into the face of Body Dysmorphia, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Histrionic Personality Disorder and Substance Abuse…I saw how ugly beauty can be.” On applying to CUNY BA, Gola was interested in studying writing “to get back,” as she wrote “at the glitterati that had offended me. It was only later after a number of psychology classes that I realized that I was part of that set. I had quixotic notions about the fashion world that left me disillusioned and it begged the question, why? All this questioning and self-reflection washed me up onto the shores of Narrative Psychology - the psychological study of how we narrate our lives. This field speaks to both my love of story and my pragmatic nature. It combines them in a way that is no longer entirely introspective and selfish, but produces generativity that, after all my years in fashion, I suddenly thirst for.” Working with Profs. Elaine Kauvar, English, Baruch and Suzanne Ouellette, Psychology, the Graduate Center, Gola’s coursework has been done at Brooklyn, Hunter and the Graduate Center.

In winter 2007, Gola traveled to Argentina to learn Spanish and to study the country’s rich history and social evolution. Since her return, she has been assisting David Frost in his dissertation research on the narratives of gays and lesbians in rural and urban areas.