Fellow Profiles

How did you become interested in the CAH project you are working on this year?

So, for my CAH project, I planned on finishing my romance novel, I Can't Move On, which I originally started in 2024 because I wanted to get back into romance writing. Well, it did start out as just a fun thing that I wanted to try; it grew into something completely different, as this is now something I want to do for the rest of my life: be a romance writer and also a screenwriter and director for movies and television shows. Through my project, I also wanted to showcase my intersecting identities and explore themes of racism, homophobia, and classism, all within the bounds of a queer mafia boss romance. I finished in July of this year, and I think I did a good job doing this, but there is also so much more to do. 

Tell us about a transformative or eye-opening experience you have had in a humanities or arts course at SCU. What did you learn or take away from it? How did it change you?

A fiction writing class I took in the winter of my freshman year really showed me that English classes can actually be fun. Because I was just taking core classes at the time, it felt very mundane and boring, but that really opened my eyes to my potential in school writing and how fun it can actually be. One of the biggest things that I took away was how, even with word limits, I can still show so much emotion and feeling while still exploring important themes that I care about. A word limit doesn't define me, but instead it amplifies what I want to do and makes it accessible to more people! I think it really changed me for the better by showing me that schoolwork doesn't have to look a certain way or be boring to follow the prompt. It can still follow the guidelines or prompt and be fun and be your own, and I will take that with me for the rest of my college experience.

How do you engage in "joyful rebellion" and what does it mean to you?

I engaged in joyful rebellion every single day through writing the manuscripts of my future books (and my completed ones), writing reviews for Thai dramas on my blog, and also making edits on my TikTok account. I think that's really the beauty of it; it doesn't have to look a certain way. It just has to push outside of the bounds of what people consider "normal." To me, it means, when I write, when I post, not to worry about what others will think but instead what I want to convey and what I want to do. It really made me realize that I don't have to follow the heteronormative norms of writing just because that's what's popular; I can do anything I put my mind to that will help add to the scholarship and also criticism of that topic, and that's truly why I love it. So for the rest of my college career and my overall career, I will continue to engage in joyful rebellion and whatever form it takes.