Student Blog: An Organic Reflection on College Living as an Artist

This blog was going to be about something completely different, but once I started writing I realized that there were more important things I wanted to say and people I wanted to recognize. I was also listening to Ben Platt's studio album, so go figure. This blog is dedicated to those eight magnificent people; go dawgs.

Coming to Butler University in the fall of 2017, I had no idea what I was looking for in a roommate. Basically, not a lunatic. I found that in Marie, a dance major from Pennsylvania. We had similar interests in room design, similar study habits, and similar interests in the arts. I had a feeling we were going to be compatible, maybe even become best friends. When we met our other roommates in our suite-style dorm, we were in for double the trouble. Maryia and Dorothy were also dance majors in Butler Ballet's infamous and rigorous program. More importantly, we were all artists!! We were going to understand each other in deep and cathartic ways and express ourselves in profound words!! Or so I thought.

Don't get me wrong: these three women are some of my best and sure to be lifelong friends I've made in college. But. Being a dancer is very different than being an actor. My roommates abided by strict daily rehearsals, so much so that they moved in packs. I either saw them all at once in a hurried moment of preparing for the day...or not at all. My schedule was much more spaced out, relaxed, and homework heavy. As a result, I often spent most of my first year alone in my room. *sighs* I didn't get to live my prescribed extroverted life within the four walls of my dorm. Until I started to make friends, that is.

Both theatre majors, I found out Rose, Catherine and Michelle lived down the hall from me in my first-year dorm. Let me tell you, these girls were theatre majors through and through. Creative urges, late nights creating student-produced works, starting different clubs, spontaneous partygoers, reading new scripts into the wee hours of the morning. It's so easy to spend all your time with someone who thinks exactly like you, who pours all they have into the art they create. But I felt a sense of loneliness with them, too. They brought out the ambiverted side of me, someone who needs stimuli until they really don't need stimuli.

I spent the next few months of my first year at college finding ways to balance my art with my friendships. I was still struggling, not knowing if I really wanted my diploma to say "B.A. in Theatre" on it in four years. Instead of worrying about something so far in the future, I leaned into the present, to work with what I was given.

Rose and Catherine introduced me to my final set of future lifelong besties, Joseph and Lindsey, two people who had interests that were completely different from any of my own. They were the kind of people who made me feel comfortable expressing all sides of myself around them, the quiet side, and the quirky-artist side. They were interested in the knowledge and appreciation of the arts that Rose, Cath, Michelle, and I brought to our relationship, but Joe and Lindsey also taught the four of us about being well-rounded and sociable if you can believe it!

In the end, all seven of these incredible people became my artistic support system. Marie, Dorothy and Maryia learned to appreciate the art that was being created only a few classrooms away from them every day. Joseph and Lindsey became the number one fans for Cath, Rose, Michelle, and me. Heading into my second year at Butler, I felt more supported in my social circles and more confident in my work as a theatre artist, so much so that it showed me how much room I still had left to grow. Now only weeks from graduation, I look back and see that my fan club was there for me at my lowest moments and my greatest successes. How did I get so lucky?

The moral of the story? Surround yourself with all different types of people, particularly people who appreciate what you do. It's rare to find someone on a liberal arts campus that doesn't have a hint of doubt in what you're 'planning to do with that' degree. They don't realize how intense of a program we're in, a program that asks us to defy logic, tap into our deepest emotions, and start our day when everyone else is clocking out. Latch on to those people who don't doubt you for a second. It's likely they're creators too.