By JACKSON NOLDE/Montana State News
On the Montana State campus, the SUB is a place where students can sit before their next class. Often people catch up on homework. Others catch up with their friends: “it’s a time to be social even with all the homework we have to do.” With her lower half of her hair dyed bright blue, she is a girl who doesn’t dress to impress. Instead, she dresses for herself, which is for comfort.
She has nobody to impress and that she doesn’t care.
If she had a boyfriend, she’d tell him to love her for she is sweatpants and all. She wears glasses and proclaims herself to be a disaster. Here is a woman who is a student studying English with a focus on teaching. Her dream is to teach English and Spanish to high school students somewhere in Montana.
Here is a very motivated student who is the daughter of a civil engineer and a stay-at-home mom. When asked if her father wanted her to follow in his footsteps, she put it simply that numbers aren’t her friends and she’d be hopeless. That was when her dad figured she was going to shine in her light. Neither of her parents pressured her into any particular set of studies, but instead told her to follow her passion because that will pay for itself.
Eating lunch, she mentions how growing up her parents encouraged her to do whatever she pleased. She discovered she wanted to be an English professor while in high school, describing her experience as an enjoyable one. She wasn’t a star athlete by any stretch; she enjoyed her book club after school. There she would help mentor middle school students reading. While she said she wouldn’t repeat high school, she wouldn’t change anything about that experience.
She is a bookworm and loves to read. She is very introspective and enjoys listening most of the time, yet that depends on the day. Her favorite author is Rick Riordan. She loves his ability to write an interesting story with including eight different characters. I asked her if she had any interest in being an author herself. She politely said that she’d turn into a raging alcoholic if she did that.
She enjoys the taste of red wine.
Ten years from now, she expects to have her life together ideally. She would love to have a steady job as the top priority; a husband can come second. She knows that some people will disagree with her about having a job before a spouse, yet with class and a lot of sass tells them to walk off a ship. One couldn’t help but laugh at this woman who’s kind of a wild card with a sense of humor that you can’t prepare for.
Reaching for a fry, she exclaims that fries are her favorite food because you can eat them in so many ways. Grabbing her phone as it starts ringing to the ringtone of Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep.”
This woman is fiercely independent. That’s why she loves Adele, in addition to the way she profits on writing songs about her ex’s. In a perfect world, Alex would want to be able to be the Adele 2.0 and single out all of her ex’s. I told her that sounds more like something of a Taylor Swift; she doesn’t give her the time of day.
It didn’t take long for us to finish the fries between her friends. She went to retrieve soda. Even though somebody told her that the correct term is pop, a 10-minute argument inside over this and concluded that each one owes soft drinks, Alex didn’t leave room to argue that Coke is way better than Pepsi.
Just as things were wrapping up, asking her if she could live in any period, Alex would want to live in the middle ages because she would want to have her vast knowledge be mistaken for witchcraft amongst the present crowd. Expecting nothing less with her response having anything short of having a sharp wit.
Her friend, Haden, who also has a very crude sense of humor loves to push her buttons. Alex isn’t one to shed from gunfire. Instead, she fires back twice as strong claiming that she enjoys kicking his tiny body.
Haden and Alex met their spring semester of 2016 and started hanging out in the fall. If I didn’t ask the question, I would have guessed that they grew up with each other as kids. After talking to her for an hour, she decided that she wanted to accomplish her homework. She is very studious and enjoys her studies.
All in all it was a lovely conversation about how two people can poke fun at each other, taking nothing for granted.
– edited by Emma Hamburg
Montana State News 
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