Makenna Aldrich stands outside College Hall.

MR: Tell me about your experience with Interdisciplinary Studies.

MA: I joined second semester of freshman year after going through six majors and not liking any of them. And then I found INTS and I was able to take, all the things I wanted to do and put it into one thing. And so I liked the flexibility of being able to do that, so…every semester since it’s just been better and better.

MR: What has your experience been like as an Honors student?

MA: It’s been good; this is my first [year] as an Honors student, but I’ve been able to talk to professors more, get more involved with them in class. Otherwise I probably wouldn’t even talk to my professors, but when you have to make a contract with them, especially if it’s not an Honors-designated class, then you have to go and introduce yourself, meet them, kind of talk to see what they’re looking for and what they’ll accept, and continue that communication through the semester to complete the contract. So it kind of pushes you to get out there and make relationships with professors that you might not otherwise do.

MR: When you started at UTA, did you think about being in the Honors College?

MA: I thought about it briefly, but I didn’t really know all that much about it. And then when I decided to do INTS, and they said [I] needed to join Honors…as I got into it I learned there was more benefits than what people had told me, because all anybody says is, “Oh, you just get free printing for a lot of extra work.” But I think that it’s more than that because I’ve been able to, focus on something in each class that I might not have learned if I wasn’t in Honors. So I wrote a paper on…things that have happened historically that are hidden in nursery rhymes in children’s songs. So the Black Plague is talked about in Ring Around the Rosie, so I wrote a paper on a bunch of songs and turned that in, and my professor loved it…. It formed that relationship. It was really cool.

MR: What are your goals after graduation?

MA: I want to join the Peace Corps, and then eventually I want to start my own nonprofit that brings education to impoverished kids in South America. And then I want to be a Foreign Service Officer with the State Department.

MR: Since you haven’t graduated yet and you’re not a senior, do you have any more goals while you’re still an undergraduate?

MA: I want to try and get done with Honors early. I’m about halfway through, and this is my second semester. And then I think that I want to try and join some other honor societies to get more involved on campus… continue staying involved, do more things with Honors… and just have those experiences and make those connections with people.

MR: Tell me about being an RA.

MA: It’s a lot of work. There’s a lot of stuff behind the scenes that isn’t always fun or exciting, but to be able to have that relationship with residents and make their experience better living on campus—because sometimes it can be scary, we have a lot of international students who have never been to America before—being one of the first people that they really see and see constantly, and kind of being that support for them, and helping them get plugged in, and figure out where their classes are…that’s the good part of being in RA, the interaction with residents.

MR: As someone who works with freshmen all the time, what advice would you give to incoming freshmen?

MA: It’s okay to not know what you want to do. A lot of people I think come into college and think they need to have everything planned out, but like myself, I switched majors so many times, and it wasn’t until I found INTS that I actually found something I like doing and I was able to take classes in something that I like doing. And that it’s okay to change your mind. Do something that nobody’s done before. Because INTS is kind of about doing something that nobody else has done before, because usually everybody’s developed major is different than everybody else’s in INTS. So being able to do something that nobody’s done is kind of exciting, not just for us but I think for Rebekah too. She gets to see how each person is like, “Oh, I’m interested in these things,” but somebody else is interested in three other things and how they combined and why. I think that’s cool.

MR: What exactly was it that made you want to stick with INTS?

MA: The flexibility of being able to choose my classes and my professors, and kind of work my degree around. A lot of other degrees, they’re already set for you. The class is already decided, you don’t get choices in what you really get to take, necessarily. But with INTS you can take anything and everything. I’ve taken a social work class, I’ve taken a philosophy class, I’m taking a global issues class. And just having the opportunity to kind of get a foot in every department and have that experience in a bunch of different things I think is really useful for the future, and in life. Because not always are you going to end up doing something that’s related to your major. I enjoy having the ability to get those skills that could be needed for the future when you have to do other things.