In high school, Mackayla Ramdhanie ’26 was a dedicated weightlifter. She was on the varsity team, placing first individually in the metro and district competitions and sixth in the state of Florida. It took a lot of discipline—early mornings at the gym, evenings spent lifting, then finishing schoolwork late at night. But she learned that she loved to push herself to achieve her goals.
“When I first got to Wellesley, I was missing that,” she says.
After a difficult spring semester her first year when she says she “didn’t have any direction,” Ramdhanie visited the government and political affairs advisor in the Lulu Chow Wang ’66 Center for Career Education and asked about military-related opportunities. “I had always associated ROTC and the military with discipline and physical stamina, which is why I gravitated toward it in the beginning,” she says.
The advisor put her in contact with Juliet Homes ’25, then an ROTC (Reserve Officers’ Training Corps) cadet. Ramdhanie was impressed that a student would have so much responsibility: “I thought she was an advisor or faculty or something … Then I met her, and I’m like, ‘Oh,there’s a student that’s in charge of ROTC.’” Homes gave her the rundown on ROTC and asked if she wanted to join. She said yes. “I don’t know what I’m doing right now, so let me just try this out and see,” she remembers thinking.
The evolution from civilian life into the military was not always easy. She begrudgingly followed regulations about personal appearance, for example, returning her hair from bright red to its natural dark color (to the relief of some of her friends, she says) and abandoning her flashy manicures. “I loved having, like, cute pink nails,” she says. “I think everyone has their own struggles [adjusting].” She says military regulations are not in place to keep people from being individuals: “It’s more to emphasize that, as a military, we’re a group that’s there for each other.”
She also learned the importance of collective work at Wellesley. Ramdhanie, an economics and philosophy major, was part of several civic action programs. She was in the pilot for the Hillary Rodham Clinton Center for Citizenship, Leadership, and Democracy Fellows program; joined Service Journeys, a weeklong Civic Engagement program during spring break; and was a Ministrare Fellow for two years, also with the Office of Civic Engagement. She also volunteered with the Boston Health Care for the Homeless and Alzheimer’s Buddies programs. “It’s been an honor witnessing Mackayla’s journey through Wellesley,” says Heidi Johnson, director of Civic Engagement and program director of the HRC Center.
Her commissioning ceremony took place on campus the day before commencement. When she took to the lectern to share thoughts about her journey, she choked up as she spoke about her parents, who were in the front row along with her brother. Both are immigrants from Trinidad; her dad quit school in the eighth grade because he was the oldest and had to help support the family.
Ramdhanie, the first in her family to attend college, says her parents had so much potential and could have done many different things. “My dad, he wanted to be a doctor,” she says. “My mom would have wanted to do something in finance.” She says she feels very lucky to have had so many opportunities, and she is proud not only to have graduated from Wellesley, but to have graduated as an officer. Her parents, she says, “always encouraged me to keep going. Even though I [wanted] to quit sometimes, they were super supportive.”
“What really made me passionate, and what made me gravitate toward a career in the military, was the aspect of public service,” Ramdhanie says. “For me, service is an inherent duty, one that I not only enjoy, but that benefits me [as much as], and sometimes even more than, the persons I am serving. And I love that I am able to engage in service in so many different ways, both through volunteering in my community and through my career in the military serving my country.”
Ramdhanie is spending the summer with her family in Florida before heading to the Air Force Institute of Technology in Dayton, Ohio, for 18 months to become a cost analysis officer. Her advice for students, particularly first-years, is to know that the first few months can be tough. “Don’t judge college based on the first semester,” she says. “It can be really difficult, especially if you’re coming from out of state or even out of the country.” And find activities you enjoy: “That really changed my experience at Wellesley.”
