- Hometown:
- Pembroke Pines, FL
Sophia (she/her) can’t wait to pursue a trumpet performance major at IU’s Jacobs School with an outside field of English. An aspiring writer—at age sixteen, she published her own fantasy novel titled Snuffed—she plans to concentrate on Creative Writing. She chose IU because of the reputation of its professors and the beautiful campus. She counts Hermann Hesse (Demian), David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest) and Albert Camus (The Stranger) among her favorite writers. At IU, she intends to make the most out of the time she will be given “to explore the intricacies of what I love.” Her study abroad plans are focused on Japan, since she has been fascinated by its rich literature and admires authors such as Natsume Sōseki, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, and Osamu Dazai. An event that made a deep impression on her was being asked to play a single note for a huge parent audience at a band concert—a nerve-racking experience since she had just begun to play the trumpet. It was then that she felt a deep connection to her instrument—of course, she nailed the note! A similarly exhilarating experience was falling from the top of a bouldering wall onto a foam mattress—a terrifying and incredible experience, Sophia reports. She will hold the Kraft and Anne C. & Brian D. Wymore scholarships in the Wells Scholars Program.