Kennedy Conrad’s dreams are filled with music. The Oklahoma native’s journey at Oklahoma State University started with an audition for the Michael and Anne Greenwood School of Music.
“There was just something about how the day was set up. It was run mainly by students. You get to meet with professors, but I thought it was really important that students were telling me about campus life, because they are the ones living it.”
Growing up before the boom of cell phones helped Daniel Metroka's imagination come to life. The Fort Worth, Texas, native came to Oklahoma State University to study creative writing and further develop his love of literature.
"I am so grateful that we grew up before the advent of phones," he said. "We had to read. We had to go outside. We had to create and not just be on an iPad all day. That stuck with me. I remember being 7 and saying that I was going to have a book published by age 10. That didn't happen but still."
At first glance, dance and science have nothing to do with one another. Yet Alannah Templon of Wichita, Kansas, has found ways to combine them.
“I have always loved dance and have always loved science,” she said. “Those are my two passions. One is more fun where the other I will make a career out of.”
First-generation college student Ryan Hollands learned about the power of education at an early age.
"My parents pushed me to educate myself and do what I can," he said. "They know that in this day and age, you have to have a college degree for certain things."
So Hollands decided to get not just one degree, but three: a bachelor’s in economics, a second in political science and a third in Spanish. And while he came from Edmond, Oklahoma, with enough AP credits to graduate with his economics degree in just a year and a half, "I thought it would be a lot more beneficial to me academically to stay."
Sydney McDaniel of Broken Bow, Oklahoma, thought she wanted to be a writer when she grew up. Yet during high school, she was introduced to the world of speech pathology, which brought back an old memory.
“I had a weird flashback,” she said. “In first grade, I read a book about a little girl who went to a speech pathologist because she was having issues with articulation and stuttering. At the end, she was able to say ‘bell.’ Her speech was improving! So, that memory kind of put the job into some type of perspective for me with my future.”
Bryce Donaghue is pursuing a double major in environmental biology and wildlife ecology and management with the goal of becoming a wildlife filmmaker. His journey began with a life-changing diagnosis.
“I have something called May-Thurner syndrome,” he said. “It basically makes one of my veins in my left leg compressed, so it blocks off the blood flow. After a while, it gets backed up and leads to a huge amount of pain and a giant blood clot in my leg.”
Claire Ringer, of Perry, Oklahoma, has always loved history but since coming to OSU, she has fully embraced her love of history through a variety of research projects.
“I am a Wentz Research Scholar currently compiling research on women in the Dust Bowl. I got another Wentz grant for next year about Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service here at OSU, or the WAVES Project,” Ringer said.
Taylor Graham gazed at each piece as she cut it out, taking in the controversy of the “That Damn Art Woman” exhibit currently featured at Gardiner Gallery in the Bartlett Center for the Visual Arts. She meticulously prepared them for a month-long exhibit that took four years to construct.
Graham, from Bartlesville, Oklahoma, is earning her BFA in Studio Art with focuses in watercolor and ceramics and a minor in Art History. In the spring, she heard about an internship that helped with the exhibit and she eagerly applied. The exhibit, “That Damn Art Woman: Adah Robinson, Bruce Goff and the Controversy over the Design of the Boston Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church South” dove deep into history.
Early on, Rachel Terry knew she wanted to pursue a career in the medical field. Her grandfather’s doctors inspired her to want to “spend the rest of (her) life in the service of others as a physician.” Terry plans on applying to a medical school in Oklahoma after graduation and wants to focus either on women’s health or pediatrics.
“They were so devoted in taking care of my grandpa,” Terry said. “After he passed away, I decided that’s what I want to do with my life.”
