In Echoes, Josh Atwater (TD ‘24, Herald staff) conducts a weekly interview and excerpts the most impactful quotes into a short-form narrative. The following is sourced from a conversation with Keeley Brooks (MC ’25). Quotes are edited for clarity and length.
“I’m majoring in music, though I was debating doubling for a while. I’m really interested in how music intersects with a whole bunch of other things, like psychology or social justice. But I think I’ve decided that I’m just going to major in music, so that I can take a broader range of other classes.
I’m really enjoying learning more about music technology, too. I heard about this thing called ecoacoustics, which uses sound as a measurement for changing ecological processes. They do stuff like recording the sound of how fast glaciers are melting, and figuring out what that can tell you. I think what I want right now is to learn as much as possible about all the different possibilities, and just go from there.
I was mostly applying to conservatories that had liberal arts schools attached to them, or universities that had conservatories. I applied to several in Washington, and one in Denver, and a few others. I was gonna do a five-year double degree program, having to go in thinking, ‘This is what I’m doing, everything is already set for me.’
Then I applied here—though it wasn’t my original plan at all. My counselor said I should apply to some larger universities just to see… and I saw the music program was incredible. I definitely feel like it was the right fit for me.
The flight home takes a long time. I live about four hours from an airport, either to Spokane or to Seattle. I usually have a layover somewhere, usually Minneapolis or Chicago. By the time you get to the airport from here, and then do all that, it takes about seventeen hours to get home. I’m super lucky to be able to go home for Thanksgiving this year. It just depends on what you can find. I got some good tickets—they’re a really weird time, it’s a red-eye. But if I can, I try to go home.”
