Rachel Cross
Student Spotlight | November 2014
Major:English (Creative Writing), minors in Economics and Latin American Studies
Research project: Ecopoetics is nature poetry from an environmentalist eye, but it’s also a way to understand how people interact with their environments, and a way to understand how you can travel and engage with other people’s environments without any colonialist attitudes. It’s all about how to travel well.
Research mentors: Megan Kaminski and Mary Klayder
Q: What surprised you about doing research?
A: How long I could spend on it and not get tired of it! I could spend hours reading and writing and talking to people about what I had come across and still not feel exhausted by the material.
Q: What do you like most about your research?
A: It matters to me, and continues to be relevant to both my academic life and to my life outside of school. How to travel and be respectful of other cultures is a life skill. How to interact with nature is something I will always value.
Q: What advice would you give to a friend wanting to get involved in research?
A: Try and combine your interests into one general theme and then talk to professors and other students that are interested in the same thing. The more you talk to people about your research, the clearer your own ideas about it will get and the more excited you will be.
Q: How do you spend your time when you're not doing research?
A: Right now, I’m running around on a mountain in Costa Rica teaching people about butterflies. When I’m in Lawrence, I’m usually just sharing tacos with my dog.