What happens after Commonwealth? Those college decisions that loomed so large in high school: how did they pan out? And how do you figure out what comes next when the clear, prescribed path of education reaches an end? Perri Wilson ’17 left her perch in Commonwealth’s art studio for the University of Chicago, where she studied philosophy and a “very Commonwealth major” called Fundamentals that helped her grapple with “big questions.” Questions like which passion to pursue: painting or public service? She ultimately chose law school in St. Louis, where she studies criminal law today, while also digging into labor-law issues like collective bargaining, equitable hiring practices, and more. 

Keep reading for a recap of Perri’s post-Commonwealth journey thus far, plus for her advice for ninth graders, seniors, and her former self… 

Getting to Know You

What was your favorite class at Commonwealth and why? 

I loved my geometry class with Rob Sherry. I had so much fun with the proofs and the logic of it, and that ended up being really helpful as a philosophy major. Also, English with Ms. Brewster, who taught me to be careful with words, and with Ms. Dale, who taught me to let words loose.

Where were you most likely to be found at Commonwealth?

Probably in the art studio.

How did you spend your time outside of school?

I was always over at my friend’s house or at dance. I did a lot of ballet outside of school.

What is bringing you joy right now?

I've been getting a lot of joy out of going on road trips throughout the U.S. My boyfriend and I drove to New Mexico a few summers ago when we were both working there, and then we drove to Seattle. I'm actually on my way back to St. Louis from Atlanta right now, where we were on spring break. A couple years ago, we went around the Ozarks. It's been so fun going to parts of the country that people often don't talk about or visit. 

What brought you joy as a high-school student?

Just spending time up at the art studio with my friends—half drawing, half messing around and not producing anything, often with the teacher yelling at us at some point. I skipped one of my AP tests because I wanted to do figure drawing…

What made the University of Chicago the right choice for you?

It was really easy to find a great community there. People really cared about learning and had a lot of fun doing it.

How have your college studies impacted your career and other life choices?

First of all, it allowed me to discover a few authors who I wouldn't have otherwise, and I read them with the kind of depth and slow thoroughness you often don't get in college. Day to day, that’s been really helpful, because I feel like I'm fully engulfed in whatever I'm reading. The majors also encouraged me to ask really big questions and to not have the hubris to think that there's an answer. What's the meaning of life as a nineteen-year-old in Chicago? Asking good questions has continued to be important to me.

How are you keeping your connection to the arts alive as a law student? 

Well, I still paint a lot, but it's really hard—law school is harder than anyone tells you it's going to be. You just have to throw yourself fully into it to make it worth it. It feels impossible to have any real work-life balance. But there are still moments when I remember how important painting is, and I try to do it once a week or so. I also try to find little artist communities; I go to a figure-drawing session pretty frequently. I've found that every city has one. I did it when I was working at the attorney general's office in Santa Fe, I did it in D.C., and I've done it in St. Louis. It's really fun. 

How did you think Commonwealth would prepare you for your post-Commonwealth life—and how did it actually prepare you?

I thought it would prepare me by making me “smart,” and it actually prepared me by making me curious. 

From Commonwealth to College to Career

Perri attended the University of Chicago for undergrad, where she was a prolific arts-and-culture writer for the Maroon and “did a program that was very much made for Commonwealth students”: a thirty-person major called Fundamentals. She had to come up with a question to guide her next three years of study, the “sort of universal questions that people have been asking forever, like ‘what is time?’” Perri settled on “What makes something natural?” She took as many classes as she could—on Aristotle's Science, Wallace Stevens, Being and Time, HP Lovecraft—that would help her “get at the question” before writing her senior thesis: Heidegger's Question Concerning Technology, “with a little bit of Robert Frost thrown in for good measure,” she says. “It was really cool.” 

Immediately following college, Perri floundered a bit but had a lot of fun, she says. In the warmer months, she traded labor for lodgings on different farms through the WWOOF program, which she learned about from some fellow Commonwealth students’ (“shoutout to Bella Pucker ’17 and Emma Porter ’17!”) senior projects. She was matched to farms in Colorado, Virginia, and Connecticut. When the weather turned colder, Perri worked at NBC News in Connecticut editing the Winter Olympics, a “bizarre” gig, since she had “absolutely no experience,” she says. “They just need so many bodies in the room to be finding B-roll and clipping video—literally stuff I'd never done before.” She spent the whole month of the Olympics working twelve-hour days doing “whatever weird little video-editing tasks” came her way. “It's super intense, and everyone gets to know each other really well,” she says. “It was a cool, very unique experience that I never feel the need to do again.” 

At that point, Perri was also trying to decide between art and law as a future career. She knew she wanted to work with and be in service to others, so she took the LSAT and applied to law schools. But painting was a long-time love (she was, of course, a regular in Commonwealth’s art studio). After her stint with the Olympics, she took a six-week course in Italy to work with oils. While “very informative,” the course helped her decide against art as a career—which ultimately made it “more fun to keep painting,” she says. “After painting in Florence, I was like, ‘I need to go for a very long walk and think about what I want to do.’” So she hiked the Camino de Santiago in Spain, spending “a really incredible month meeting people from around the world and doing a lot of self discovery. Highly recommend that experience to basically everyone.” 

That journey helped Perri decide to defer her admission to Washington University School of Law in St. Louis for one year. “I really felt like I needed to decide whether it was right for me and try working in the legal field.” She gained that experience at a legal clinic in Washington, D.C., called Bread for the City, an organization that serves the unhoused, offering legal services in addition to doctors’ appointments, a food pantry, and more. Because Bread for the City is a full-service agency, Perri could see firsthand the interconnected issues homeless people face—someone with chronic heart disease can’t pay their medical bills due to a Medicaid rejection, which prevents them from getting treatment, which stymies their ability to get a job, etc.—and strategize with both her clients and fellow practitioners in finding solutions. She also learned more about what she wanted from her career. “I really loved direct service: having clients, talking to them, getting to know them, feeling like I understood what was going on in their lives. And the fast-paced clinic life I also really enjoyed.” 

While Perri went into her first year of law school thinking she wanted to do public defense, she discovered labor law along the way. Before making any leaps, she again tested her theory by working in a labor law firm in D.C., Bredhoff and Kaiser. For the record, she’s “always happy to talk to students about labor law,” she says, a lesser-known field with wide-reaching implications. “It's something people don't know a lot about, and it's actually really important: how unions bargain for good contracts; all the litigation that happens around [employment issues like] racism in the workplace, unfair firings and hirings; but also larger contract issues that get really complicated on the national scale. It can encompass family law, because what is work if not how we provide for our families? It can encompass all kinds of welfare issues, health-insurance issues, because healthcare is obviously wrapped up in work.” 

Though she enjoyed the work at Bredhoff, she realized she missed serving individuals. And so, when it came time to apply for post-grad positions, she returned to the job she did for her senior project: public defense. She will be starting at the public defender's office in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in August 2026 (alongside another Commonwealth alum, in fact: Charles Kip ’18). 

“If I had to identify a throughline, it would be that I really love working with people, and I want to do client work. The legal world has many paths for people who love to serve and do client-centered work.”

Advice for the Past, Present, and Future

What would you tell your high-school self?

Be nicer. It took me too long to figure out how important kindness is. 

What would you tell yourself on the first day of college?

Try harder to develop relationships with professors. I was never very good at it. I'm still not very good at it. It's something you just have to force yourself to do early on.

What’s your advice for Commonwealth seniors?

Two things: one, the relationships you have at Commonwealth—friendships and acquaintances and otherwise—will become more important over the course of your life, because you realize how unique your high-school friends are. Not to be an exceptionalist about Commonwealth, but it's hard to find people who are as wonderfully weird and authentic out in the world. Prepare yourself to put in the effort to continue to communicate with these people, even when life totally shifts in college, so your relationships can last. I wish I had done a better job of that. 

The other thing: I really recommend seniors, if they haven’t already, to try to get a job outside of school, like spending the summer working at a coffee shop, because, again, Commonwealth can be such a strange little isolated world.

What’s your advice for Commonwealth ninth graders?

Don't take it too seriously. Don't burn yourselves out. It's a marathon, and it's going to keep going after Commonwealth, too.

What was the most useful thing you learned as a teenager?

People appreciate your ideas more than they do your successes.

What does it mean to be an adult?

Paying taxes. 

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