http://www.instagram.com/studentsofumich

Students of Umich, 500 S. State St., Ann Arbor, MI (2026)

03/09/2022

“The turning point for my interest in photography and graphic design occurred around 2015-2016 when I found myself scrolling through tumblr. The photos I came across on tumblr
were overly-edited and often saturated with several Harry Styles’s fan edits. I remember scrolling through the photos on this app and judging people’s edits. For instance, with the Harry Styles edits I saw, I would outright think to myself ‘I can tell she was not with Harry Styles’ from the picture on the account. It got to a point where I felt myself judging these edits so harshly I told myself I had to be good at editing. If I wasn’t, I had no right to judge other people’s edits this
badly.

In high school, I began to take photo editing more seriously, editing on my computer rather than on my phone. As I started editing on my computer, my family got me a new camera, and I even
had my own little Youtube era. With the higher quality pictures I was able to take, I found myself editing to a whole new level – from changing the color of my hair in photos to recreating rap
album covers of popular artists such as Tyler, The Creator. This new editing process gave me a whole new confidence boost.

I grew up attending a predominantly STEM based high school; I never believed I would be attending this university for art. As a first-year art student, I had no idea what to do when I was asked to draw. Yet, I thought to myself ‘How can I mix as much as the stuff that I like to draw with my love for graphic design?’. As I continued through my drawing classes, I found myself
creating more collage work, and even producing many more paintings that would serve as the background of the posters I create today. Pursuing my passion, I’ve learned how much growth
can be established by simply building your own interest. I am incredibly grateful to sustain my interest at this university and look back at all the growth I’ve had as a result.”

- Nina Walker
Photo credit and editing: @9.uhh

03/09/2022

“The turning point for my interest in photography and graphic design occurred around
2015-2016 when I found myself scrolling through tumblr. The photos I came across on tumblr were overly-edited and often saturated with several Harry Styles’s fan edits. I remember
scrolling through the photos on this app and judging people’s edits. For instance, with the Harry Styles edits I saw, I would outright think to myself ‘I can tell she was not with Harry Styles’ from
the picture on the account. It got to a point where I felt myself judging these edits so harshly I told myself I had to be good at editing. If I wasn’t, I had no right to judge other people’s edits this
badly.

In high school, I began to take photo editing more seriously, editing on my computer rather than on my phone. As I started editing on my computer, my family got me a new camera, and I even
had my own little Youtube era. With the higher quality pictures I was able to take, I found myself editing to a whole new level – from changing the color of my hair in photos to recreating rap
album covers of popular artists such as Tyler, The Creator. This new editing process gave me a whole new confidence boost.

I grew up attending a predominantly STEM based high school; I never believed I would be attending this university for art. As a first-year art student, I had no idea what to do when I was asked to draw. Yet, I thought to myself ‘How can I mix as much as the stuff that I like to draw with my love for graphic design?’. As I continued through my drawing classes, I found myself
creating more collage work, and even producing many more paintings that would serve as the background of the posters I create today. Pursuing my passion, I’ve learned how much growth
can be established by simply building your own interest. I am incredibly grateful to sustain my interest at this university and look back at all the growth I’ve had as a result.”

Photo credit and editing: @9.uhh

02/23/2022

In highschool I told everyone I was going to study engineering. However, that wasn’t what I was really interested in at all and I truly had no clue what I wanted to study or what career I wanted to pursue. It wasn’t until second semester freshman year when I took my first Film class that I finally knew what I wanted to study. My sophomore year I declared my major in Film Television and Media. At first there was pushback from my family, but they came to terms with me choosing what I wanted to do. Within film, my goal is to empower Black people through real storytelling and accurate representation. The most recent project I worked on called Branch Out is about three Black college students experience attending their first white party. Reaching out to other people, and showing them that people of color hold important spaces and their story deserves to be told is what’s crucial to me.

Despite the challenges of being a Black student at a PWI I have found comfort and strength in being a part of different organizations like The Black Film Society, The Black Student Union, and Sigma Lambda Beta International Fraternity Inc. All of these spaces have helped me create a strong and supportive community who inspire me to pursue my goals as well as find myself. The encouragement and motivation from my friends and brothers has been essential in me transitioning from graduating from my small highschool in Detroit with 80 other students to coming to The University of Michigan with 30,000+ undergrads. I’ve changed the way I dress, become more outgoing, began working on improving myself and my wellbeing, and taking on more responsibilities.
~ Malachi Pitts
Pic credit - Marisa De La Cruz-Martin

12/01/2021

“One of my favorite things I did in college was joining a quartet. Leaving high school, I knew I wanted to bring my violin with me and keep cultivating my passion for music into college. I joined CSO and POPs, but I missed the intimacy of smaller string quartets. I heard from a friend about a course called RCHUMS 250 that puts together chamber ensembles. The string quartet I joined became one of my favorite ways to spend my time. We’d set out to rehearse for an hour and look up two and a half hours later, backs aching, but happy.

I started playing violin when I was around 3 or 4 because I wanted to copy every little thing my older sister did. As a kid, it was fine. I had the non-unique experience of setting the timer, cheating on practice logs, dreading going to lessons where I knew my teacher could tell exactly how much I lied about practicing the past week. It’s hard to love an instrument when you sound terrible and your only motivating factors are your parents and the friends you want to keep seeing at orchestra rehearsals on the weekend. I was in seventh grade when my violin teacher passed away, and that was when my parents stopped pushing me to pick up the instrument. For a year, it sat in its case unopened. Over time, I found myself feeling lost without it. After the year passed, I picked it up again, but for myself.

There’s something about classical music that is so non-academic and separate from my career and social life aspirations that allows me to transcend all the day to day chaos. There’s such a constant, busy atmosphere at U of M, but going into my rehearsals, I felt everything slow down and dissolve. I am incredibly grateful to have furthered my passion for the violin and music at U of M, and I encourage anyone else who is interested to do the same!”

Carolyn Chen
Photo Credit:

11/10/2021

“I vividly remember my summers in Malaysia -- the immense heat from being so near to the equator, the incredible food, and my 30 cousins flooding our rural village for the upcoming potluck celebration. The language barrier was always funny because my mom’s side of the family would try to speak in English to my dad and I, and we would try to speak in Malaysian to them (it was far too broken for either of us to understand lol). Regardless of the language barrier, there was this communal aspect of being in Malaysia that I always adored.

Growing up, I’ve always dealt with trying to find a balance between my Malaysian and American heritage. I am half Malaysian and half white. As a freshman in college, I was so eager to be more involved with the Asian American community. In fact, I even discussed some of the Asian American organizations I wanted to be a part of in my “Why Michigan?” essay. However, I remember going to a mass meeting for one of these organizations for the first time and feeling so much imposter syndrome. I walked out of that meeting believing I didn’t look Asian enough or feel Asian enough to resonate with any of these people.

Reflecting on the past few years at U of M, I’ve learned how hard it can be to balance the dynamic of having a mixed racial identity. With that said, I’ve learned that finding a community amongst your peers does not necessarily mean having the same cultural heritage as them. I believe community is fostered from the shared experiences you have with your peers, whether it be through your interests or your identity.

I am grateful to have found that sense of community I felt during my summers in Malaysia here at U of M. Whether it be as a member of the Kessler Scholars program my freshman year or as current president of Generation Mental Health, I’ve learned that community can be based on a lot of things, race only being one of them.”

- Allyson Dobrowalski

Photo Credit: Sydney Edwards

09/29/2021

“My number one fan is my seven year old sister. Whenever I play her the new music I’m working on, she’s the first one to tell me ‘Parth, you’re going to be so famous someday!’
During the ongoing pandemic, I was fortunate enough to realize how close me and my family are, and how much support I would receive from them to pursue my aspirations in music.
I remember when school closed down for the first time in March, and how angry I was when I wouldn’t be able to have a completed senior year. I was so frustrated I decided to create and produce a freestyle expressing these emotions. Not thinking much of it, I was reached out to by a producer who really enjoyed what I had created. From that point on, I decided to take my music a little more seriously.
My music is similar to hip hop and rap, and I began making music for fun and posting it on YouTube. One of my main motivations for creating music is the lack of diversity I see in the hip hop music industry. Sure, there is one brown rapper (NAV) but I believe that with my cultural background I will be able to influence hip hop with the many Bollywood and Punjabi songs that I am influenced by. I want to show people that they shouldn’t let anything hold them back from their dreams, whether that be race or something else.
Initiating this sense of diversity allows me to give back to my community. Giving back to the community and especially to those who are younger than me such as my sister and her friends, is not something new to me. During the pandemic, I reached out to my neighbors and my sister’s younger friends and created a dance studio because my passion for music stems from my love for performing and dance: I want to inspire people younger than me to achieve their dreams as well!”
cont in comments

09/17/2021

“It was the night before the third orgo exam in my sophomore year and I was just staring at my coursepack. I wasn't gonna lie to myself, I was sitting in the UGLi at 3 am and I was like “I have no idea what I am doing.” I called my parents at 3 in the morning and told them, “I’m freaking out in the library and I am gonna drop this class.” I was surprised that they were very understanding, told me to take a deep breath and said “If this is the right decision for you, we aren’t going to be mad at you for it. We want you to succeed, but be happy.” The next week, I tried out for a couple Bollywood dance teams. I tried out for the co-ed team first and I completely failed my audition. I forgot the choreo the first time and was just standing there. It was super embarrassing. I knew a lot of people on the team, I was like, “you know what, it's fine, I’ll kill the second run through.” I went the second time, made it about five more seconds in and froze up again. That was the first non-academic moment where I was like “wow, I kinda s**t the bed there.” I got a text after saying “we know everybody gets nervous, don’t worry”. I almost didn't show up for the next tryout for the team I eventually made. I could never have that experience again. But, one of my friends convinced me to go. After, when I did get the email that I got in I was pleasantly shocked, and accepted it on the spot. The biggest thing I learned from these experiences is there is no point in failing and never trying again, the world keeps spinning and you just have to wake up and put your best foot forward.”

Sush Sunil

Photo Credit Frances Gugu

09/08/2021

“I’m a Spanish minor, that’s something that I’ve never been confused about. When I was in high school, we didn’t really have a good Spanish program. You had to take two years of foriegn language for Michigan’s state requirements. My school was small, around 800 people, and we didn’t even have French; Spanish was the only option. A lot of kids took choir or band to supplement their requirement after one year of Spanish, and I’m not really musically gifted, so I did the two years of Spanish. For the first year we had this teacher who…she was very nice, but was basically like, “Here's crosswords and word searches to do in class”. Then, my sophomore year of high school, we got this new teacher, and he was this young guy who showed up to our school who just had this massive passion. It was like a new game everyday, where he was making us actually use Spanish. There was a group of us who fell in love with his class and were like, “Let's take Spanish 3!” There literally wasn’t a Spanish 3 class at the school before that. I looked forward to that class everyday. And so the end of Spanish 3 came around, and then we were like “what about Spanish 4?” Twelve of us signed up for Spanish 4, so there was just one class, and it was my senior year with 6 of my closest friends. With this much interest in Spanish now, he offered to the school board, “Why don't we take these Spanish 4 Students somewhere?” He found a way for us to all go to Spain. My mom surprised me and told me, “You can do this.” So me and two of my friends all committed to go to Spain a year before the trip. It was a $3,000-$4,000 trip, my mom and dad said, “We signed you up but we don’t really know how we are going to pay for it.” I’m thinking, “I’m 17, how am I gonna pay for this?”

cont. in comments

08/04/2021

“‘What is unique about you?’ I remember being asked this question in front of a large crowd of college students and judges during the Sigma Gamma Rho Black male pageant my sophomore year of college. Not only was it nerve wracking enough that this was the first public speaking event I was involved in at college, I was also the first contestant. I had no idea how to set the tone of the event or how to match the energy of the other contestants.
Pageantry was never something I saw myself participating in. I remember showing up to this event looking at all the other contestants' introduction videos and wondering ‘how did I get here?’ or ‘what am I going to say?’
With that said, I took it upon myself with full confidence to showcase a part of me not many of my friends in college know about. I showcased my unique memory. My memory is something that is unique to me because it gives me the ability to memorize all of my contacts' phone numbers and even recite the first 100 digits of pi. From my closest friends in Southfield to the ones I meet in college, I always see the look of confusion on their faces when they ask me why I don’t have any of their numbers saved in my phone. It’s because of my memory. During the pageant, I remember going out in the crowd and reciting my friends phone numbers as well as the first 30 digits of pi. I could’ve gone to 100 digits, but by then the audience and judges got the point.
Pageantry allowed me to have the confidence to showcase more of my ‘hidden talents’ to my peers. After winning the Sigma Gamma Rho pageant my sophomore year, I decided to enter the Alpha Kappa Alpha ‘Mr. Ivy League’ pageant my senior year. I remember wanting to win this pageant but feeling a bit intimidated to perform in the talent portion of the event by the SMTD students who I was competing against. Nevertheless, I went into the talent portion playing the piano while showcasing my graphic design artwork. Piano and graphic design, similar to my memory, are two talents I often kept to myself. Showcasing these skills at the pageant was the first time other students were able to get a glimpse of what I did. (cont.)

06/23/2021

“Technology is often not a concrete, natural, and static thing. It’s an artificial, abstract, and dynamic concept that we all contribute to. For example, in the beginning, the Internet wasn’t inherently toxic. People just made something in a possibility space, and humans as a body sometimes choose toxic possibilities in that space. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way.

I worked at a tech company last summer in a product role. To me, technology is just an accessible and impactful tool I can use to attack problems. The company has this initiative called Next Billion Users, which focuses on bringing technological access and education to developing countries. The purpose isn’t explicitly profit-driven, but rather to expand the sheer number of people using the Internet and improve their experience. Through that, I worked on expanding and launching internet access to many subsections of India and Southeast Asia.

What’s incredible is that those people are already headed in a different direction in the technological possibility space. They use the Internet in a different way than we do - for example, using their phones as their only financial vehicle and tool or Youtube as their sole search engine. I’m a big advocate for letting people in their own cultures choose the possibility space best for them. Some technologists think new users don’t know what they want, and tech companies have a responsibility to educate and lead them to a “better experience.” But, who decides what the “correct” way to use the Internet is anyways?

Many people talk about technology as a broad concept, like “The Internet” or “social media,” as if they’re physical things. But they’re not. They’re concepts we decided to hop in on and set standards for how behavior should be structured. One way you can think about it is that we are the Internet. We are social media. And that’s an empowering mindset because it means we as a collective have the power to shape, change, and influence technology in ways that make us happier and more fulfilled.”

~Atharva Talpade

06/03/2021

“Growing up, I had moved seven times and to four different countries: India, Malaysia, Indonesia, and now my family is living in Dubai, UAE. My interest in Psychology and Business was sparked as we moved due to my parents' work. Coming to Ann Arbor to attend U of M was the first time I was living independently. However, I was disheartened to find that this self-proclaimed diverse university was much more white than I had expected. Disappointed with the lack of diversity the university presented, I found myself enjoying classes in Intergroup Relations (IGR). I began to realize that as a woman of color at this university, it was important for me to have difficult conversations regarding the lack of acceptance towards individuals of less privileged identities and to create inclusivity within the workplace. It wasn’t until I joined Phi Sigma Pi that I felt like I was directly able to create this inclusivity at the university. Joining the national honor fraternity at first, I found myself unsurprised that it was not diverse. In fact, I was a little intimidated, and I never saw myself becoming very involved within the organization. However, after being approached by another brother in the fraternity to take a leadership position, I was surprised to realize the impact I had in engaging with the DEI aspect of the fraternity. Later, when I took on the role of becoming president, I began to realize how impactful it is to have a woman of color in a leadership position. I learned that advocating for yourself will take you so much farther than you ever thought and serving as a mentor towards other students in the fraternity is much more impactful than the awards I received at the university for my DEI efforts. After graduating a few weeks ago, I am excited to be working in HR in the Bay Area to continue to have these difficult conversations and cultivate a greater amount of diversity and inclusivity within the workplace.” - Bhoomika Gupta
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02/07/2021

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Students of Umich

03/09/2022

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