This week I had the pleasure of interviewing our lovely Campus Cutie, Annabelle Taylor! At this years Relay for Life, which was held in the Field House and attracted many Rochester students. One of the events allowed students to shave their heads or cut their hair to raise money for cancer research or to donate their hair to make wigs for those undergoing cancer treatment. While most of those shaving their heads were male, this brave lady stepped up and had her head shaved for this amazing cause. She is such an inspiration!
Name: Annabelle Taylor
Major: Women’s Studies, Computer Science
Birthday: August 23, 1995
Hometown: I’m actually an Army brat so I moved around all the time and don’t really have much of a hometown. Depending on the day I’ll answer DC, Leavenworth KS, or Deland FL.
Advice to give incoming Freshmen: In college you’re enough of an adult to set your own bedtime but enough of a kid where eating a box of Easy Mac is perfectly acceptable. That’s a beautiful, beautiful middle ground. Try new things and make the most of it!
Favorite thing about University of Rochester: I can tell people about my majors and mention that I’m attempting a minor in Hebrew and they don’t bat an eye or say that’s weird. They’ll probably actually bring up a weirder collection of studies and we can nerd out.
What is your campus involvement: I live on the Music Interest floor and play tuba in the brass choir and wind symphony. I’m also a member of Gamma Phi Beta and work at the IT Center (bring me your broken computers!)
Dream Job: I’m very undecided about what I want to do professionally, but advocating for women’s representation in STEM fields is very near and dear to my heart. I’d love to work with younger girls to keep them interested in math and science (and maybe teach them to code) so we can work on fixing that gender gap on our end.
Life motto: “Everything in life is only for now.” -Robert Lopez
Why you decided to shave your head for Relay: I wish that I had a really intriguing story about how I did it in someone’s honor, but it’s just something I’ve always wanted to try. I like bending gender roles/ideas a little (okay, a lot) and I wanted to see if I could express my feminine side while cutting off all my hair. Some of my friends also supported me by donating money to Relay for the cause, and that was cool. Oh, and girls with buzzcuts just generally look really badass and I wanted to join their ranks.
Personal Story about cancer or Relay: I associate people with music, and when my friend Karen’s dad died of cancer I was thinking about what song was going to be “his song.” I felt like it ought to be something serious, but my mind wandered back to a memory from about 10 years ago when he was driving me back home after a playdate. We had the radio on, and he was embarassing Karen SO much by belting out all the words of “Video Killed the Radio Star” when it came on. Now whenever I hear that song, I smile and think of Charlie Lundell.