Alumni Profiles

B.S., physics, 2006

Master of Science in Radiological Medical Physics candidate

College of Medicine

The University of Kentucky

Lexington, Ky.

To watch a video with Annie, click here.

Who is Annie Erbsen? “I’m usually referred to as that eccentric fiddle-playing physics major who’s traveled the world.” Once you meet her, you’ll know that’s all true. That, and more.

Let’s start with the fiddle-playing. In fact, she plays almost everything that has one or more strings. “Music has always been a large part of who I am,” she admits, and her track record proves it. She’s played since early childhood, coming from a musical family; she started a music and dance club at Guilford (“Fancy Feet & Fingers,” specializing in swing and contra music and dance); she studied Irish music in Ireland; and now she has a contra dance band in Kentucky.

“That’s the thing about Guilford College,” she says. “If you are passionate about something, the school encourages you to follow that, to do something about it. I started the dance club the first week I was at Guilford. We were allowed to do great things … including flying in some professional swing dancers from Sweden!”

Annie also maintains that the experiences of the dance club actually changed lives: “People who took up dancing were transformed. They developed confidence, they became more physically fit, their social skills improved. They developed a lifelong appreciation for music and dancing. We provided, in a word, happiness.”

Annie studied in Limerick, Ireland, during her junior year at Guilford. “I loved it so much that I had to go back. So I did. As soon as I finished work at Guilford my senior year, before heading to graduate school I went and lived in Ireland. It was fantastic.” She ran a vegetarian cafe in a flower shop for a few months, then she stayed another three months to play music and teach dance.

Not to stop there, Annie also walked 550 miles through Spain on the Camino de Santiago, part of a collection of old pilgrimage routes that terminate in Northwest Spain.

When she admits to being, in her words, “an artsy-fartsy dancer musician girl who can do physics,” she says this: “I have Guilford College to thank for who I am. The college allowed and encouraged me to be my own self, to be who I truly am, and I am forever grateful for that.” She says that her experiences in high school were horrible … that she constantly was aware of not fitting in, of not belonging to the mainstream. “But Guilford was like finding fresh air to breathe. I was so relieved. There are not many places in the world where you can truly just be yourself, and Guilford College is one of them.”

She adds: “Everyone at Guilford is exploring who they really are, and I was so happy to be able to find my own skin, to discover who I am. And it was in a safe environment, without fear. That is so wonderful.”

(A good deal of Annie’s enthusiasm about her Guilford College living environment comes from having lived part of her years in one of the college’s alternative living options, called The Pines. “It was almost utopian,” she says, “with vegetarian meals from our own organic garden, with a grey water system, with maintaining compost piles. We ran the house by holding Quaker-style consensus meetings weekly, and we were situated right next door to the Guilford College president. What a great life.”)

And physics? “Physics was all new to me when I arrived at Guilford, and I started it just to satisfy some Honors requirements. I remember the turning point — I was in the office of my physics professor, I was attempting to do some partial differential equations on his wallboard, and I told him I simply couldn’t do it. He told me that I already had all the tools I needed — the math, the physics — all I lacked was the confidence. And he was right. His confidence in me inspired me to be successful, to become a physics major.”

Annie says she learned from that professor, and she learned from the whole Guilford College environment. “There are so many people at Guilford with different experiences,” she says, “and you can learn from all of them.”

Religion and spirituality provide one example. “I come from three generations of non-religious Jews,” she says, “and when I arrived at college, nothing — and I mean nothing — had any validity for me if it couldn’t be explained through logic. If you wanted me to believe something, you had to show me the proof.”

That changed. “Through associating with some Guilford people of faith, and through my study of physics, I came to realize that there are many things that cannot be explained empirically or through pure logic. Even though I am still not religious, I now embrace spirituality and community. I am much more open-minded toward religion than I used to be.”

Now Annie Erbsen is earning the master’s degree in radiological medical physics at the University of Kentucky, “one of the best schools in the world for clinical medical physics,” she says. What happens after that? Of course, she has many options. The leading contender now is a job in the northern Italian Alps. “I’m about 90 percent certain that I’ll go there. I’ll need to learn Italian and French, but I have a year and a half to do it, and it is sooo beautiful there.”

No doubt there will be swing dancing in the Alps before long.