This summer, I spent 31 days volunteering with the College of William and Mary’s American-Bosnian Collaboration Project in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Project, the oldest international service trip at the College, began in 1998 when a visiting Bosnian scholar visited campus to teach a course about Yugoslavia’s political disintegration.

I’ve worn the same two items of clothing to almost every hookup I’ve embarked on at the College of William and Mary. First, I adorn a black bomber jacket from H&M, one with too many zippers and too few pockets. It makes me look 10 times edgier than I actually am, and I like that because it signals to the men I’m meeting that I don’t need their validation.