Last night, my roommate Margaret jokingly asked me if I carried a scientific calculator on myself at all times (because she does). I responded, “No, but I have taken to carrying around a color journal.” We laughed, because this is just another instance of our oppositeness. We are the inverse of each other in pretty much every way possible. She’s tall, blonde, athletic, and an engineer. I, on the other hand, am short, dark haired, doing good to get myself to the gym three times a week, and a double-humanities major. But we’re such good friends despite (or maybe because of) how different we are. The contrast between Margaret and me is, in her words, “mildly hilarious at all times,” throwing into sharp relief my place in Rice’s intense academic community.

To give some perspective: I was the only freshman in my residential college who came in to Rice as an Art major. There are a few more class of 2018 English majors, but we still number in the (very, very minor) minority. Most people don’t come to Rice to study the things I’m studying, and although many do switch out of Natural Sciences into Social Sciences and Humanities fields, the disparity is definitely a constant presence in my life. Let’s face it: It’s hard to be continually enthusiastic about creative enterprises like art and writing, even in the most creative environment. It’s even harder to maintain enthusiasm for those things in a place that has a very small culture for it.

I love Rice’s Art and English departments, the faculty, and my fellow Humanities warriors, but we occupy a tiny space on campus. This is both physical, in terms of buildings and classrooms, and figurative, in terms of campus atmosphere. We have no one designated art building, and my current English 300 course, "Practices of Literary Study," is held in a classroom at the Recreation Center. It seems like everywhere I turn, there’s another Engineering expo, Pre-Med opportunity, or career fair full of Oil & Gas employers. Although they do exist on Rice’s campus, Humanities career fairs, info. sessions, and employment opportunities are relatively few and far between, and almost require a Herculean effort to find. Hordes of people flock to classes like Gen Chem. and Physics, forming study groups and developing friendships. Classes like these pervade lunch and dinner conversations, and much of my peers’ free time is spent investigating and applying for jobs and internships at hospitals or with big Oil & Gas companies. And I fit nowhere into this large portion of our academic culture.

Although I love what I do, the seclusion created by my involvement in Rice’s Art and English departments can quickly become stressful and disheartening. It’s intimidating

enough to try to find a job as an artist or a writer in our increasingly STEM-centered professional world, and even more intimidating to attempt success in these “riskier” fields coming from a school that has relatively little involvement in them.So how can we deal with this? Well, personally, I’m working on it. All of my sophomore year so far has been spent in a quandary about my place as a writer and artist on Rice’s campus, and what that means for my place as a writer and artist out in the “real” world. First things first, I took the opportunity to engage in a great life talk with my painting professor and got his opinion on a budding artist’s future (think museum jobs, grad school, and life as a practicing artist). Then, after deciding to pursue these interests with no more hesitancy, I dropped my Education course, which I had enrolled in because teaching was my backup plan. I’m a planner and a low risk-taker, so dropping Education and pursuing my passions and career goals without this safety net was a drastic move.

Thankfully, my parents were (and always have been) extremely supportive, offering advice and wisdom from personal experience, and from "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Racing" (thanks, Dad). When I had finally made the decision to jump feet-first, wholeheartedly, whole-hog, all-in into my art and my writing, my mom told me to sleep on it, then wake up the next morning and do something that would start me down one of those roads. So, the next day I applied to write for The Odyssey. Within less than 24 hours, I had the job.

Everything is still in a state of flux, but that flux was exactly what I needed. Since I’ve started down this road, I’ve made it my personal mission in life to find something to be enthusiastic about in what I do every single day and to do something I love every day. I’m so happy to be writing this, and can’t wait to see where swimming in the proverbial deep end gets me. I’ve already jumped off the diving board, which was the hard part; now I get to splash around. And hopefully, instead of being a fish out of water, I’ll become a big fish in Rice’s small Humanities pond. Maybe, with enough enthusiasm, I can even help make that pond a little bit bigger.