-: You know my time at UT was really a time of uncertainty
where I didn't know what I wanted to do.
I tried every major I could think of.
The best thing for me was finding a professor
that I could
that I could engage with,
that opened my mind,
that challenged me a little bit,
didn't just say, "Here are the facts.
"You need to know them."
You know, it was more about, "What do you think
"of this article you just read?
You know, "Can you analyze it?
"Can you be critical of it?"
I know that was crucial for me
when I was first getting started and I didn't know
what I wanted to do.
And I took an anthropology class at 8 a.m.
It was the study of evolution.
I'm like, "Oh, cannot believe I signed myself up for this."
And then that being one of my favorite classes
and that was with Doctor Seamus Metress
and he and his wife, Doctor Eileen Metress became mentors
to me where if I had questions,
if I had doubts about the things I was learning,
or the things I was reading,
they were someone I could go to to talk that out
and to realize it's okay to have a different opinion
and to disagree and to try and create a new idea.
That was something I didn't get in a lot of my classes
and it certainly wasn't something I got before heading
into UT, before heading into any kind of higher education
'cause you kind of want to be this obedient student
that knows the answers and you have
to know the wrong answers just as much as the right ones.