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| Kinsinger clears the way on a screen pass. |
Kinsinger Touches Down in
London
As an offensive lineman and team
captain, Morgan Kinsinger has been overwhelmingly shaped by his football
experience at Grinnell. His role on the
team has extended beyond the playing field to help build his academic and
social lives, and has given him access to opportunities that allowed him to
explore locations beyond his native Iowa.
Kinsinger say s that football
initially helped him find a place at Grinnell by introducing him to a group of
people with whom he knew he shared in interest.
Despite this commonality, Kinsinger says, the team is a cross-section of
Grinnell, which includes a range of students as diverse as the College
itself. This social support group helped
mediate Kinsinger’s doubts about fitting in at Grinnell and a difficult first
few months at college, during which he struggled to leave his social comfort
zone.
“Grinnell’s definitely given me a
chance to kind of get out of my shell and develop a friend network, and it’s
given me the ability to articulate myself more clearly, and I’m dong projects
and research now that I never would have dreamed I’d be able to do, especially
coming from just a small town in Iowa,” Kinsinger said. “I wasn’t sure if I felt like I belonged at
first, but then I guess as I grew and as I became more accustomed to Grinnell
and the culture I really felt like I belonged.
It’s been an exciting transition, to come to be where I am today.”
His inauspicious beginnings didn’t
prevent Kinsinger from becoming the captain of the team in his third and fourth
years, a leadership role he says is especially significant because he was
elected by his teammates.
After graduating, Kinsnger is
keeping his options open but plans to explore banking opportunities in the
Midwest. He says that, reflecting back
on his time at Grinnell, both the team’s and his own achievements have exceeded
the expectations he had at the beginning of his first year.
“I think football kind of exceeded
my expectations in that I guess I just didn’t expect very much out of myself
and out of the team, and we’ve been able to do a lot more than other teams have
done,” Kinsinger said. “And I was able
to get a lot of playing time and experience the college sport. It was a lot of fun.”
Playing on the football team has
also allowed Kinsinger to make connections with alumni that helped him to
broaden his horizons. As a senior,
financial support by football alumni has allowed him to play with other
division three football players at all-star games in Virginia and Mexico, where
he also did community service work.
His alumni connections made through
the team also secured him a summer research opportunity with an alum and
professor at the London Business School, where he built on his academic work as
an economics major by participating in financial economic research online,
working remotely from his home in Iowa.
Kinsinger says that this personal guidance helped him to explore his
career options. Ultimately, Kinsinger
says, his time on the team allowed him to experience many of the new things he
hoped to get out of Grinnell. His time
at college has been characterized by the exploration of new places, which was
largely made possible by his friends and mentors.
“I just wanted to . . . experience
something that would let me see the world, more than just what Iowa has shown
me, and granted Grinnell is in Iowa, I’ve been able to do a ton of stuff that I
wouldn’t have otherwise done. So the way
that it’s kind of exceeded my expectations is that I have been able to travel a
lot and see a lot through friends that I have here,” Kinsinger said. “You know, I’ve played football in Mexico,
and then I also got to visit friends in Aspen and go skiing over winter break
and I went out to Hawaii to visit another college fiend, so it’s been really a
neat experience to have just these places to go and these friends that are
willing to take you in, in the Grinnellian spirit.”
