(uplifting music)
-: Making my life count I think is
somehow finding a way to give
a voice to the voiceless through arts
and education and figuring a way
that my voice can add to that conversation
is something that I'm striving for.
There's so much good that I think is inherit
with what it means to just go about our daily lives
and go about our daily business
and we fixate, unfortunately, on the negative
and that way we need art
and we need moments of levity and education
to sort of like wrap our heads around
this insane kind of world
cause we're just trying to make it up as we go along.
-: Gustavus provides a lot of platforms
for figuring out who and what I might need to be,
want to be, what I could become
and I've joined a social justice theater group
and I was on a football team
and I was in a choir
and I was learning about histories
and learning about what stories I represent
and what stories I've been made to represent.
In the Gustie way of like being a Gustie
and that sort of transcending all reality.
Once I left Gustavus, I had to really do that again
and trying to explain that
so I just sort of tried to become something
that was of excellence
and that was of creativity and striving.
Maria Tierney gave me the option.
She opened up the door.
I had again a liberal arts education.
My general requirements were things like
poetry and anthropology, religion
and so I had to take some sort of art credit
and it was between drawing and dance
and I couldn't draw so I decided to take a dance class
fundamentals of modern and got in touch with my body
and as an athlete I was already, you know,
thinking I was in touch with my body.
So then I took the next course
and at one point I don't even know it just happened
Stans, I think she was just like off the cuff
she's like you should think about doing this
and I was like I should think about doing what?
And she was like dance
and at that time I had no idea that dance
could even be a career and be a profession
and so again in that naive sensibility
I was like alright and declared a major
and that's what happened.
Maria Tierney just gave me the option
where I didn't have it before.
I'm Brian J. Evans and I'm a Gustie.
Gustavus Adolphus College
Make your life count.