Everyone already knows that Baylor bears are smarter than the average bear, but they are often brilliant and multi-talented too! This week, I spoke with a bear that wears so many different hats, she has to duck when she enters a room so they do not get knocked off.
Tirzah Reilly is a senior English major with a minor in studio art. She is originally from Waco, and she liked it so much that she decided to stick around for her college years. “I like Waco,” she told me. “It’s got a bad rap, but it’s a nice town.”
It’s certainly true that the Wack has a particular artsy charm that would appeal to anyone with an artsy bone in his or her body, and Tirzah has at least fifty artsy bones. Honestly, she probably has some artsy muscles as well. When discussing her hobbies, she mentioned that she draws and paints like a pro, and she also plays the mandolin and the ukulele. As a studio art minor, she is also required to dabble in photography, woodcutting, and a plethora of other artistic media. Truthfully, she is brilliant at all of them. Her other hobbies include watching BBC (I’m right there with you, T) and torturing her cat with hugs (“He hates them!” she said).
Tirzah is a fantastic poet as well. In fact, when I asked her about what she feels has been her greatest accomplishment at Baylor so far, she mentioned that her work was first published at Baylor in the Phoenix Literary Magazine, a compilation of the best of Baylor’s undergraduate poetry and prose. She has also won the The Poetry in the Arts, Inc., Dr. Robert G. Collmer Prize associated with the annual Beall Poetry Festival student literary competition (which, for everyone not familiar with it, is a pretty big deal). I have been fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to sit in a couple of poetry workshops with Tirzah, and if her accolades were not already enough to prove her talent to me (they were), then hearing her poetry read firsthand sealed the deal.
For all her great literary achievements, however, Tirzah told me that she felt her greatest Baylor accomplishment was her continued involvement with Kokernot Residence Hall. Kokernot was where Tirzah spent her freshman days, and she served as a CL there during her sophomore year. These days, she works as an OA at the front desk. “I am so glad that I got to be a CL there, and I’m proud that I can continue to work there in a different way!” she told me. The fact that Tirzah considers working in a place she loves to be a more significant accomplishment than all of her prizes and awards is pretty telling her sparkling personality, if you ask me.
Towards the end of our talk, I asked Tirzah what her best Baylor memory has been so far. She told me all about her study abroad trip to the UK last summer, about becoming so close with all the bears that went with her, and about all the new and different places they visited. “We took a weekend trip to Scotland,” she said. “To Edinburgh, and there’s this mountain there called Arthur’s Seat. The first day, we climbed all the way to the top, and I looked down at the city, and it sank in for the first time where we were.” But the best part of that trip was the next day, she told me, when she and some of her friends climbed up the mountain again to sit and write and just enjoy each other’s company on the Scottish mountainside. “I’m so glad Baylor brought us together!”
In the future, Tirzah wants to study library sciences at the graduate level. “At Baylor?” I asked.
“We’ll see!” she said.
Chelsea Teague is a sophomore BIC student majoring in professional Writing.
You GO girl! A winner, as usual!