Hometown: Saint Paul, Minn.

Major/minor: Spanish/ studio art 

[Grace]How a prospective experience solidified her choice of college:  I knew the formula I was looking for: small, liberal arts, big study abroad program. I only applied to four places, and I didn’t want to go to three of them. I only wanted to go to Beloit. What really brought me to Beloit is the people because I was sitting all alone at Commons, a little prospective student who’s lost her host, and this group of random people comes and sits with me and just integrates me into their conversation like I was a student.

Why she moved into the Outdoor Environmental Club (OEC) house her first year: I really enjoy the outdoors. I’ve been camping every summer of my life−and in the winter, too. I think that the theme of the outdoors really attracts the kind of people I enjoy−people who are interested in each other and in the earth.

On the OEC’s fall break trip to the Black Hills: That was the first trip I went on with the OEC and the first trip of the year. We drove all through the night, and it was a really great opportunity to meet people I wouldn’t have met otherwise. We did some tough stuff—there was a hurricane level storm while we were hiking up a mountain. There were trees falling. It was an awesome experience to meet people in.

On eventually taking a leadership role within the OEC: I’m excited to have agency and start planning things. Out of the group that lives in the OEC now, I’m one of the more experienced people, and I’m really excited to be the person who can be the resource. I’m guiding at a camp this summer—the camp I went to as a kid—so I’m really excited to test out my abilities at teaching people and helping people out. In the end, hiking is just walking...with heavy stuff.

[Grace]On helping out with Face Your Waste: Face Your Waste is an awareness event about how much waste we generate in two or three days—just on the residential side. We go around and collect the weekend’s garbage on Sunday night and put it in the Chapin Quad. We hope it makes people more aware of what they’re generating and what they’re using every day. I had a shift sleeping in the tent on the Chapin Quad for two hours. The next day I babysat it a little bit, and then we cleaned up that night and hauled it all to the dumpsters.

How her art became more than just a hobby: I was approached by the Communications and Marketing Office (at Beloit College) because they found my art blog. I never thought that art was going to get me anywhere; I thought it was just going to be a hobby. I do printmaking and I do photography because I have my mom’s old film camera that I figured out how to use. They wanted a print of Middle College so I made that, and I’m going to continue it into a series, so I’m going to do Eaton Chapel next, then Pearsons Hall, the Logan Museum of Anthropology, and hopefully Morse-Ingersoll Hall. I went through an architecture phase when I was little, so I’m still really moved by aesthetically pleasing buildings or houses, and there are a lot of those around Beloit.

How her blog is the perfect example of putting the liberal arts into practice: I use my blog to post anything I’ve made. It’s all visual. I don’t sell my work or have anywhere else to put it. If I didn’t put it on the Internet it would all sit on shelves in my room. I put a lot of thought into my work, and I really enjoy making it. I feel like if it’s just sitting in my room there’s no point in making it besides my own personal and emotional thoughts that go into it. I put a lot of thought into what the blog looks like and the content. It’s a visual representation of me because I made all of it, but it’s also a documentary of what I’ve been doing and thinking. It’s a recording of what I’m feeling over time. I just passed 100 followers the other day, which was really exciting.