Kelly Trop, A11
Kelly Trop, senior, team captain
Hometown: Emmaus, Pennsylvania
You just have to think, “I can actually do this.”
“I had a friend who was also applying here, and I thought “Wow, he’s, like, so perfect for this place, and I’m not like him. St. John’s was always a first choice for me, but for a while it was a first choice in an alternate universe. I eventually overcame my self-doubt, applied, and here I am.”
“Kunai [women’s sports] is exciting. I hadn’t played team sports since middle school, and I was pretty bad then: my memories of soccer from that time are mostly me searching for four-leaf clovers and not understanding what people meant when they told me I was off-sides. Then during my freshman year a friend came up to me and said, “You have to come to Kunai!” So I went, and I just kept coming back to play sports-soccer, basketball, netball. The Kunai spirit has always been a big help. Now I’m a team captain, a strong defender, and I’ve never missed a practice. I won my blazer last year. ”
“I can actually do this. What drew me to St. John’s was the idea that anybody who was really interested in learning and had a good work ethic could come here and leave well-rounded--not just a ‘math’ person or a ‘science’ person or an ‘English’ person. You just have to think ‘I can actually do this.’”
“It’s cliché to say I’ve learned a lot, but that’s probably the best summation. I learned how to write about math and science, which was a goal of mine. It’s the same for philosophy. I remember in high school, in my freshman philosophy course, having to do a presentation on Santayana, and I tried to read the work but I just couldn’t do it. But now I’ve read Kant and Hegel. I can handle it. Socially, being here has helped me learn how to operate in a small college, how to get along with people no matter how you feel about them. This is good practice for the real world.”
“What am I writing my senior essay on? I’m writing on: what’s matter and is it substance? It’s mainly about quantum mechanics and Leibnitz’s Metaphysics. I chose to write on these to prove to myself that I could. Writing on them will let me look in-depth at the stuff I love, and have fun doing it. I’ll admit I waited on choosing my essay topic. I kept hoping it would fall from the sky. Then one day a fellow student made a joke: write on quantum mechanics and the monad. I knew I had my topic.”