The first thing that anyone should know about Brittany is that she is that she is more passionate about politics than almost any other person I have ever met. If you have read her own column for The Mug, “The Daily Grind,” then you know that she knows her stuff, and is not afraid to tell it like it is (“but not in a Trump-like way,” she would say).
I got the chance to talk to Brittany over the phone a couple of nights ago, and I grilled her with questions about her time at Baylor and what she thinks she would like to do in the future.
“What’s your favorite Baylor memory?” I asked.
Because I am so intimidating and scary, I heard her laugh nervously on the other side of the line before she warned me with, “Okay, so this is kind of cliché…” Brittany told me that her favorite Baylor memory by far was our football team’s classic domination of TCU a couple of years ago, when the Bears won with a score of 61-58. “I was right in the front row of the line section,” Brittany said, “and I rushed the field with everyone. It just really felt like I was a part of the Baylor family.” I agreed that there was no bonding experience quite like stampeding with a herd of riled up twenty-somethings over a field of crushed horned toads, and then we moved on.
“If you were going to pursue anything other than a career in politics, what would you do?” I asked.
“A friend and I actually went through a phase last year where we really wanted to be CIA agents!” Brittany said, excitement palpable through the phone. We both laughed about that, and while I shoved my own secret aspirations to be the next American super spy deep into the corners of my psyche, Brittany admitted that she probably did not have the skills required for the job. “But it’ll always be a secret dream!” she said.
Next I asked Brittany what she had accomplished during her time at Baylor that she was most proud of. She said that she had had trouble thinking of actual, tangible things that she had done in her two-ish years in Waco when she first read the questions that I sent her. Finally, she said, she had decided that she was most proud of the person that she had become—proud of the journey that she had completed.
“I was trying to think of a way to say that that wasn’t cheesy,” she said, laughing.
“I think that’s great!” I said. “No worries. Last question: can you describe Baylor to me in three words?”
This was a hard one. Together, we explored Thesaurus.com to try to coax the words out of Brittany’s brain. Awkward silence reigned as she struggled over finding just the right thing to say. Finally, she decided on life-changing (“That’s one, right, because it’s hyphenated?”), unique, and fun.
“Yep,” she said as I typed the words. “Sounds about right.”
Chelsea Teague is a junior majoring in professional writing.