News & features about the Vanderbilt Commons from the students who live here
“I am passionate about food. There is so much more to eating than filling your stomach. You can experience different cultures, take a break from stress, remember certain things from the past, and just enjoy the taste. I am always eating in my dorm, the library, and in class. Although I love a variety of food, my favorite place on earth has been Chipotle since like five years ago.”
“I’m really passionate about floral design. It’s a great way for me to express myself and it’s a good art form. I haven’t had the chance to do it since I’ve been at Vanderbilt but in high school I had a side business and would sell my creations. I’m just generally very crafty so I love to do a lot of DIY activities for fun”
I’m really passionate about the mere essence of music. At any point when I may feel like my world is crumbling, listening to a favorite playlist on Spotify, or even playing a few songs on my saxophone seems to lift me up so much! Music has this power because no matter how much we may try to hide pain, music itself lies within our hearts. This is why I decided, in spite of how psycho it may seem, to take up a secondary major in it; a decision that hopefully will make my college experience worth while!
I’m really passionate about writing. Anything really, music, poetry, anything I have to write. I love music, I’m currently working on my album so go listen to it when it comes out. I appreciate how music brings people together and I hope to one day be a screenwriter .
“I worked in a lab the summer after my junior year and that got me really passionate about Medicine. I was studying Parkinson’s disease in a mouse model and I chose that because my grandfather has Parkinson’s disease. I’m really passionate about both research and working with patients so I’m hoping to become a M.D-Ph.D. to do both of those things. I find neuroscience very interesting so I’ll probably specialize in that. I’m very excited to learn about the brain while helping people.”
“I like to play the piano. I’ve done that for a while. My family has this rule where you have to take two years of piano for every child, and so I just kind of fell in love with it. I played in front of judges. I didn’t really do much competitive, but I definitely did recitals and played in front of people. For me, it was more of just a release from my life at school — teachers wanted things done a certain way, and I feel like music is very subjective to how you feel in that moment and there is no right answer. So, I think for me it was just a way for me to express myself. My parents didn’t force me to do it; they just chose it for me. I’m actually not thinking about taking lessons from Vanderbilt. It’s just a lot of time. Music was more of a release from everything else. It wasn’t my life.”
“I started learning different languages because I heard people talking, but I couldn’t understand them, and I wanted to be able to. Apart from Spanish, I speak French, Italian, modern Greek, Hindi, and Portugese. I do travel quite a bit, but not to these countries. I just talked to people online. There are a lot of language-learning platforms where you can be like, ‘I want to learn this language. Somebody come teach me.’ Sometimes I watch TV or read in a new language. I think each language has a different personality. For example, German is very analytical, very to-the-point, very crisp. Italian is very melodic just because all the words end with vowels, which is why you always hear Italian people, when they’re speaking English, end their sentences with a’s and e’s. And, they talk-uh like-a this-uh. I think you can best connect with people when you’re talking with them in their native language. I’m taking Japanese [at Vanderbilt]. I want to [travel abroad]; I don’t know where though. That’d be chill.”
“I grew up in Papua New Guinea, which is a little island in the south Pacific. Everyone there walks around wearing Bob Marley t-shirts. It’s definitely very different from here: The roads are very bad. I love how free everyone is there in Papua New Guinea. I can literally go up to people in the middle of the street that I’ve never met before and just talk to them and hang out, and within ten minutes, we call each other, ‘brother,’ which is a really cool cultural dynamic. I love that it’s a tropical island, and yet I also get to live in the mountains. I can just walk outside my house and see these massive mountains and go hiking in them whenever I want. I really miss my friends and the community that I built over there. I’m excited to be here and do the same, but there’s definitely a lot of friends I left behind.”
“When I was a freshman in high school, I met a girl named Sabrina in my swim class. The first time I looked at her and she smiled, I could see her eyes sparkle with love and adventure. I knew right then we would be wonderful friends. She taught me to love unconditionally, to never take a moment for granted, and that there is never a bad time in life to dance. She has truly made me a better person. I joke that she didn’t want to be my friend at first. But she was really just homesick because she had just moved away from political turmoil in Venezuela. A few years before meeting Sabrina, a psychic told me that I would help someone who had moved, and she would become very important to my life. I believe it was destiny for me to meet Sabrina.”
“A very pivotal experience for me as a first-year student was the fall rush process for Greek life. I knew little about the fraternities on campus, but my roommate told me I should check out Alpha Tau Omega. When I went to their rush events it felt like more than a social club, but rather a true brotherhood where the brothers genuinely cared about not just each other but others as well. Joining Alpha Tau Omega has allowed me to branch out to new friendships and opportunities on campus, and it has definitely had a tremendously positive impact on my first year at college and beyond.”