Photo Courtesy of Daniel Cody

“I am an English major with a publishing concentration, from Chicago, Illinois. I heard about Hofstra a couple years ago through a friend. I was researching different schools and I fell in love with Hofstra because it included everything I was interested in. I was between Hofstra and maybe one other school, but I had ultimately decided on Hofstra because they chose me immediately. After visiting again, I was sure of my choice. Music is my passion. I did School of Rock for five years, and performing – singing especially – has been a big part of my life for as long as I can remember. I had originally wanted to go into music business or even performance. Music is something that can change your mood immediately. It has the power to give people the choice between emotions: happy if you want to be happy, sad if you want to be sad. I think that power is mesmerizing. It really just depends on my emotions that day. One of my favorite musical experiences is the time I went to a country music festival in Wisconsin. I don’t even like country music that much, but the atmosphere and performances made it worthwhile. After the lineup was complete, there was a rave, and while you can’t really rave to country music, I think it proved that anything is possible. However, my American Studies English teacher in high school had written a book but still found spelling and grammatical errors, and I decided that I’d go through and find all the small mistakes she’d made in class. She was surprisingly super appreciative and encouraged me to go into copyediting. She even offered to send me a copy of her next book so that I could go through it and copyedit for her. Media is a lot different than literature, and it’s something that seals the deal for copyediting. I worked in my school newspaper after I was encouraged to join by my English teacher, and while the news isn’t my passion, I still really enjoy learning about words and the messages they carry. Still, music makes me content – it gives me peace of mind. In a world of enormous pressure to succeed and to get ahead of everyone else, it is super important to be able to make every day somewhat better, and I do that by listening to music. In this past week, I’ve found a solid group of friends that I’m comfortable talking to. Some I knew from orientation, and some I just met in my building. I’m really glad I chose to come here because now I can’t imagine myself being anywhere else.”