2025 Student Commencement Speaker Maddie Weston discovered a way to decode some of the murkier parts of her chosen discipline when she was a new student.
Straight out of John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor, she enrolled at the University of Southern Maine in the Political Science program, loving the workings of government and politics. But in Economics, she found a way to deepen her understanding and further her fascination with public policy.
“It kind of felt like I found that missing piece,” Weston said. “I found that economics was a really great tool for me to understand how things worked fundamentally. I liked the different ways it interacted like policy and also human behavior, all of these wonderful nuances that I didn’t have with Political Science.”
She took classes over summers, became a resident assistant, and took a job in the Learning Center to tutor students contending with the rigors of USM.
Three years after her arrival on campus from her hometown of Bradley, Weston, now 21, is graduating with majors in both Political Science and Economics. And she plans to attend law school in the fall.
It’s a path that she hopes will eventually lead her to non-profit organizations where she wants to help establish policies to help people.
“My goal is I want to give back,” she said.
Then she quoted the Boy Scouts motto:
“Leave it better than you found it,” she said.