To Infinity and Beyond!
Buzz Lightyear gave us a good motto back in elementary school when all we had to worry about was making sure our shoes stayed tied and not picking our noses in front of our teachers. Now that we’ve hit college and are on a steady track into the real world, Buzz’s take on life might actually resonate with what we are doing. I’m not saying we should all become astronauts or anything, just that we might be able to leave more of an impact than our Miller Lite induced dance moves at Pavs on Monday night or our unyielding 2.9999 GPA. (It rounds up, so I can keep my scholarship!)
While it’s easy to stay within the comfort zone of our Columbia campus, college is the perfect time to reach out into the community and grasp larger life goals. While we do have jobs as college students, we also have jobs as human beings to help each other through life, while sustaining and supporting the things that we are passionate about. After all, isn’t college about discovering who we want to be and how to be it?
Some USC students have made that discovery and are proactively pursuing it. These go-getters have found a way to move beyond the confines of college campus. They are each pursuing a very different path, but have all sacrificed time, money and a lot of effort to accomplish something truly noteworthy while maintaining the status of full-time college students. These particular students have gone above by passionately pursuing their personal endeavors and beyond by simultaneously advocating a cause. Though infinity may seem a little far off, these students are making their way beyond the classroom one light-year at a time, while inspiring us to BE something more than just students.
SUZANNE ELISE: 21, Studio Art
suzanneelisephotography.com
“I believe everyone is given and gift and they should use that gift to better the world.”
BE an artist…and an advocate for medical research.
Suzanne Elise’s cousins were born with cystic fibrosis.
“After my cousin Jackson died at age 12, I began my series Cognizant. This photo series focused on childhood chronic diseases and helped me handle the loss,” says Elise. “Art is a cogent mechanism that can be used to improve the world or cope with the harsh realities of the world. Cognizant is a twofold project that incorporates both of these ideals.”
Elise uses her artistic talent to spread awareness about very real and very life-threatening diseases, both medical and psychological. For Cognizant, she meticulously covered the rooms in her apartment in 1.5 inch squares in order to draw a parallel to the considerable amount of time devoted to home care for the four chronic diseases featured in her work. She draws a correlation to the pain and effort patients experience with these diseases, which includes cystic fibrosis, cardiovascular disease, muscular dystrophy and osteosarcoma.
“I chose each room’s color based on the awareness ribbon of the illness,” Elise explains.
The time to set up each installation varied between two days to an entire week, and after creating the installation, Elise arranged lights and photographed the scene with a large-format field camera.
The series caught the attention of City Art along with the Morris Museum and the University of Texas. It was shown at each location and is also featured on Elise’s personal website. Elise’s current project is entitled Subsisters and is about the loneliness and isolation many elderly women face. The six women featured are between the ages of 82 and 94, are widowed and live in relative isolation due to their personal losses and progressive health issues. Elise’s project involved creating a close bond with these women over the span of a few months and seeks to bring awareness to their day-to-day struggle while hopefully inspiring more students and youth to develop a stronger relationship with the elderly.
This compilation will debut soon in Ain’t Bad Magazine and Light Leaked. Elise also handmade a book for this series and is donating a majority of the profit to Widows and Orphans International.
“I aspire to aid others and the environment through my photography,” she says.
ReligionShare
MATT DORCHUCK: 22, International Business & Finance
LUKE MILLER: 20, Exercise Science
www.trinityshare.com
“The upside is infinite and the downside is minimal.”
BE an entrepreneur…and an advocate for your faith.
Matt Dorchuck and Luke Miller are avid golfers, and are both on the Kappa Sigma exec board. However, these two USC seniors are much more than just sports enthusiasts and fraternity brothers. Together, they have become entrepreneurs by founding an online social media website – with a twist.
In an age where social media is simply a must if you want to know what is going on in the world, Dorchuck and Miller have pushed that philosophy into an unexpected genre. Their site is a place for people affiliated with particular religious organizations to communicate.
“ReligionShare is a firm that creates social media tools for religions and organizes them into a specific site,” says Dorchuck. “So, for example, for Catholicism, we’re creating a site that, for one, lets parishes have their parishioners sign up to perform specific roles in the mass through our site. These kind of networking tools are going to vastly improve the way that churches are able to organize.”
The college students turned business partners got their start after recognizing the lack of online information and interaction around Miller’s personal parish.
“We realized this problem wasn’t just a Catholic problem. It’s a religious problem. So, we’re building sharing systems for multiple faiths, starting with TrinityShare for Catholics,” explains Dorchuck.
After brainstorming and forming a business strategy, number-crunching Dorchuck and people-person Miller found out about USC Proving Grounds, a competition that awards money to student entrepreneurs.
“We realized the quickest way to see if our solution, ReligionShare, was legitimate was to enter it into the competition,” says Dorchuck.
They entered the contest and left with a fat check.
“Winning gave us $15,000 and a host of other supporting mechanisms from the Faber Entrepreneurship Center, the Moore School of Business, and the Columbia Tech Incubator,” Dorchuck says.
So, what is next for the two soon-to-be graduates?
“Our goal is to have 500,000 users on the network by the end of 2015,” Dorchuck says. “We’ll still be based out of the Columbia area, but plan on traveling to meet anyone who we think could benefit from our services.”
Their advice for other USC students with creative minds and limited funding is to take the time to seek assistance from campus organizations and competitions like Proving Grounds.
NICOLE ROSA: 22, Public Health
www.stsm.org
“It’s a tough job.”
BE a volunteer…and an advocate for social issues.
Nicole Rosa gives elementary school students the sex talk. This is one of her educational tasks when she volunteers for the Sexual Trauma Services of the Midlands (STSM). Rosa, a senior public health student, is a survivor advocate, which means that she works as a campus promoter, hotline counselor and support system for rape survivors in the Columbia area.
“It’s a taboo subject and not many people want to talk about it,” says Rosa. That doesn’t stop her from speaking out about the heavy issue and volunteering her time to the cause.
Rosa first heard about STSM after the organization came in to talk to one of her Psych classes. She began training sessions this past Christmas break before starting shifts in February. She works weekly eight-hour shifts that include a variety of tasks. A phone call usually takes around thirty minutes and includes an opportunity to comfort and counsel. Much lengthier hospital visits can last around five hours and consist of sitting with the survivor and walking him or her through the entire post-rape process. “I am their support system through the time of chaos. I hold their hand, tell them what to expect, everything they need me to be,” Rosa explains.
Though rape is a pertinent issue on college campuses, it is not confined to them.
“Your idea of a rape victim may be a college female, but you might walk into the room and here’s a six-year-old little boy. The hardest thing to prepare for emotionally is the unexpected. It’s important to come in with an open mind and not a preconceived notion,” Rosa says.
One of Rosa’s goals as a USC advocate is to spread the idea that dressing a certain way or going out and getting drunk is never a free invitation.
“I want to be that person that stresses that it wasn’t your fault. My job is to take on the physical and emotional burdens of these survivors.”
Seventy-Six and Sunny
AUSTIN LANG: 22 and guitar/vocals
DAVID KESLING: 22 and drums
JAWANN STUCKEY: 22 and bass
TIM BYRD: 22 and everything else
“How are we balancing school and shows? Well, we’re hanging in there somehow.”
BE a musician…and an advocate for your fellow students.
On a hot August day in 2012, the temperature hit seventy-six and sunny, and the thermometer inspired a band name. Lang and Kesling grew up in the same hometown and had been jamming together since they were young, meeting jack-of-all-trades Byrd (keyboard, mandolin, harmonica, you name it) en route, but Stuckey moved down from N.Y. that same autumn to complete the crew.
“We have most recently been described as 90’s revivalists, but I would also add with a leaning toward organic pop-rock,” Kesling says.
Hootie & the Blowfish, who also got their start at USC, heavily inspire the crew.
“I mean, we are made up of three white guys and a black dude, “ Kesling laughs. Seventy-Six and Sunny plays a wide variety of 90’s covers – think Matchbox Twenty and The Goo Goo Dolls – but also just dropped a new album full of originals. The disc, entitled “Italian Night Club” as an ode to Jimmy John’s, includes a potpourri of mostly energetic tracks, lyrics penned by Lang. My first question: Are all the tracks tributes to sandwiches? “We’ve woken up with sandwiches next to our faces, but no, there is no other relation to Jimmy Johns than the album title,” Lang laughs.
Before the album dropped, though, the band had already started playing shows in Columbia and spanning out from there.
“We became the house band at BreakThroughs, which was our big start in FivePoints, then we branched out to Charleston, Myrtle Beach, Hilton Head, Charlotte, even Tennessee,” Kesling says.
“Don’t forget Bubba’s Love Shack in Merle’s Inlet…good times,” Byrd adds with a suspicious chuckle.
They play up to four shows a week, which can be daunting to balance alongside schoolwork.
“We aren’t really balancing at all,” Kesling begins. “I mean, the answer for the parentals is it’s going great and we are relating everything we learn while playing to our classwork,” he adds.
Seventy-Six and Sunny plans on continuing to support fellow students in their last semester at USC as well as promoting their latest album. You can expect songs from “Italian Night Club” to feature the bandmates’ different experiences, mostly highlighting the waves of life and love, and the magnified emotions prevalent in all human relationships.
. The record is currently available on iTunes and Amazon, as well as a bevy of other music download sites. So, be sure to support your fellow students by checking it out.
