Freshman.

Tom Outland reminds me of what the typical humanities student is expected to be: endlessly curious about everything around him and dying to know more and discuss it with anyone and everyone he possibly can. He has found what he loves and wants to delve in head first in order to absorb the subject from all angles. It is this pure love for discovering knowledge that makes him so eager to find out everything possible about what he has found at the mesa. In this way, Tom reminds me of what I should be doing at college. Sometimes it is hard to forget that college is not all just about finding a path that will lead you to a career, but also to discover new subjects and hidden passions in areas that you previously barely even knew existed. '

At Carnegie Mellon, HSS is a weird environment among all of the concrete paths of engineering and art that all of my friends have where they are locked into a major for their entire time at the school and consequently a career path. Instead, as an H&SS student, even though I generally know the path I want to head towards, I basically have the chance to take two years to explore anything I want and see what inevitable paths that I stumble upon, like Tom stumbled upon all of the artifacts in the mesa. While sometimes I get a little overwhelmed at the infinite amount of things that I might find interesting, I guess that is one of the reasons that I wanted to come to college, to ultimately find my version of the mesa in finding that one subject that I cannot stop thinking about and I cannot stop obsessing over continuing developing my passion for. But part of Tom's discovery also included the struggle in crossing the water, so I think it's only natural that I will struggle and have a little difficulty before I stumble upon what I am really passionate about. I am just hoping that whatever I ultimately decide that I love, I will not be discouraged by others’ lack of enthusiasm, such as that Tom experienced by everyone he encountered in Washington, DC or Roddy’s inability to see what the artifacts meant to him. Although I hope this will not occur, I feel it is possible, especially since I am leaning towards environmental policy, which many people are apathetic about, so my passion will not be met with full support. I hope to have Tom’s degree of passion for the mesa in whatever I ultimately decide to do.