Silver Maple Fund Legacy Scholarship

I have always noticed people’s differences. To me, it comes as naturally as breathing to notice that some people do not mind stepping on sidewalk cracks while I avoid them like my life depends on it. I like to think I do this because I am attentive, but the more likely answer is that it comes from being someone fundamentally different. I am different from my family, who practice or study heavily mathematical fields; different from my friends, because of my OCD and the way that I think, and I’m different from the majority of my peers because I am queer. The myriad of characteristics I have listed that set me apart are not physical, yet to top it all off, I am also different because of my hair. You might imagine that growing up with red hair, the worst I could get is an occasional “Weasley” joke–which I did, frequently– and it certainly does not help that my name is Ginny ( I promise I am not named after the character). Notably, however, I am the only redhead in my family, not even my twin brother. Towering over me at a whole foot taller, he is an athlete, studies material engineering, and has dirty blonde hair. Growing up beside him felt like living in a shadow: I did not care for math or competing in tennis– what I cared about was art. When I was growing up, I did not always know what I would study or what diagnoses awaited me, yet I always knew that I loved art. I filled sketchbooks with drawings of characters I made on dress-up games, watercolored in sketchbooks that really had no business being watercolored in, and covered my hands with gouache paint. When I reached middle school, my dad pulled an old table out of storage and designated a corner in the basement to be a makeshift studio. Art was my favorite thing in the world, and even extended into my classes at school. So, when I eventually had to step away from it in place of other studies, I had to scrape out time for art at home. However disappointed I was, it helped me evolve in theater and marching band. In the midst of an OCD diagnosis, I threw myself into these new passions. By my senior year, I had become the drum major for the marching band and the stage manager for the theater program. This also led to the discovery of my love for the humanities, more specifically, psychology and anthropology. All of a sudden, my world opened: there was a field all about the differences in humans! I learned about how cultures developed, why those different cultures had different traditions, and why, despite all of that, humans are still so similar. My love for psychology has always remained strong, but being able to also learn about humans and our cultures has captivated me. I am now in my second year of undergrad at Butler University with a combined Anthropology and Psychology major, and I am still fixated on people’s differences. I notice them, I study them, I paint them, and I live them. I am so grateful for my red hair, because it taught me, before anything, how to be different.

"So like, do the curtains match the drapes?" The first time someone asked me that, I was in the seventh grade. Vulgar? Most definitely. However honestly, it isn't the craziest thing I've ever heard uttered about my hair. Growing up, I took great pride in my red hair. My mother would tell me: 'Evelyn, you have the rarest hair in the world.' Old ladies in the supermarket would stop us to tell me they were envious. Hairdressers would make me promise to never dye it. 'People would kill for this color!' they'd exclaim. I don’t remember being made fun of or treated differently as a child, and being homeschooled up until my junior year of high school is probably a big reason for that. In our home, learning was curiosity-driven and personal. I was encouraged to ask questions, explore big ideas, and think for myself. My red hair, like my sometimes quirky interests or deep love for ballet, was simply one more thing that made me, me. However, one thing that became immediately apparent to me upon entering public school, is that being ginger makes you the first target for uncomfortable comments, and being homeschooled only adds fuel to the fire. "What do you mean you're homeschooled AND a ginger?! Did your parents hate you or what?" That's something a close friend once said to me. I think she meant it as a joke, but after hearing the same "joke" hundreds of times from almost everyone, it didn't really feel like one. At first, I laughed it off. I didn’t want to seem sensitive or dramatic. I became more cautious about what I shared, even joking about myself to blend in. But that didn’t feel right either. Even the well-meaning comments stung: “But you’re so normal for a homeschooler!” Which I suppose was meant to be a compliment, but it was also loaded with stereotypes. Why do these assumptions exist? What about having red hair makes someone a target for open ridicule? Why are homeschoolers seen as anti-social or sheltered, even when they’ve been socially engaged their whole lives? And why are these traits seen as inherently bad, instead of something to be understood, or even celebrated? These questions were more than just thoughts passing through my mind, they began to fuel a curiosity I had long wanted to explore. I became fascinated with discovering how people shape their identities and how outside pressure and judgement plays a role in it. How language and "harmless jokes" often reveal deeper biases. This is what led me to anthropology. My senior year I took AP Language and Composition, a class that is deeply structured around culture and the human experience. For our semester project, we were assigned an ethnography, where we observed a specific subculture. That assignment lit something up in me. I realized I didn’t just want to ask questions, I wanted to study the systems, histories, and patterns that inform how we relate to one another. I wanted to find out what creates culture. I plan to study anthropology because I’m drawn to the complexity of the human experience. My own journey, from being misunderstood to understanding others, has shown me how powerful, and sometimes painful, that shaping can be. But it’s also shown me the importance of looking closer. The things that once made me feel different have become the lens through which I see others more clearly. They’ve prepared me not just to study culture, but to contribute to it, with empathy, curiosity, and a genuine desire to make space for every person and every story.