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Sarah Ann Mockbee
Intern
in Action, May 2004
Inspired by Public Radio Toward a Career Goal
 When Sarah Ann Mockbee was growing up in the South, she was introduced from an early age to public radio, listening to the local station as part of the soundtrack of her family's daily life. Fast forward to her years at Barnard and she discovered a natural career ambition based on her experience, which she tested during her senior year as a producer-intern at WNYC, public radio in New York City. This summer, after graduation, she will continue the internship and her goal will be to land a permanent position in the field.
Mockbee worked for two of WNYC's most popular shows about ideas, culture and politics, "The Leonard Lopate Show" and "The Next Big Thing," and the experience sealed her ambition to work as a producer after graduation.
Mockbee, who thinks very little of television and doesn't even own a set, is unequivocal about public radio. "I love it," she says. "I feel like it's important for it to be there."
At age 25, Mockbee is slightly older than most of her classmates in this year's graduating class and her background and experience are unusual. She attended Auburn University in Alabama for two years straight out of high school. Weary of school by the end of her sophomore year, she left college and for the next two and a half years, pursued odd jobs that took her across the South, up the East Coast, and eventually north to Brooklyn, where she helped to start an after-school program for children under the auspices of the federal Americorps program, then to Manhattan, where she worked in an art gallery in Chelsea.
A native of Canton, Mississippi (population 10,000), she immediately understood the appeal of the big city. She recalls thinking, "So, this is why everyone wants to be in New York City."
Although many of the people in her life feared she would never complete college and urged her to continue her education, Mockbee knew she needed to be on her own, although she recognized the advice was well-intended. "I would not be half as well off as I am now if I hadn't taken time off. Not only was the time valuable, but it brought me here to Barnard."
She believes her experiences helped her to focus and take her education seriously. She discussed returning to school with her father Samuel Mockbee, an award-winning architect who was a founder of The Rural Studio, a program in Auburn in which architecture students design and build homes in low income areas of Alabama. A MacArthur "genius" grant winner, her father encouraged her to look at Barnard, "He was encouraging," she says. "He knew more than I did that I belonged here."
Her father, who had been battling leukemia, died before she was accepted to Barnard, and Mockbee has shown his faith in her capacity to excel academically was right on target. She will graduate summa cum laude and is a new member of Phi Beta Kappa. She was recently awarded the Ann Barrow Hamilton Prize for Journalism and is a co-recipient of the William Haller Prize for excellence in the study of English literature.
“When I left Mississippi for Auburn, I really thought I was breaking out,” she says with a laugh. She was initially intimidated by New York City, but has made it her own thanks in part to a network of family, friends and the social opportunities on campus. She and her fiancée, a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, also plan to marry in the fall.
“New York is very fast-paced, and I’m glad to have gotten into that groove,” she says. “You have to make things happen for yourself here.”
“Barnard has set me up on a foundation I can stand firmly on,” Mockbee adds. "I don't feel like I'm behind because I took time off before coming here. I feel like I'm ahead," she says.
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