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.