Meet & Greet

By Chris O'Connell in March | April 2015, Scholarships, TXEX on February 27, 2015 at 12:26 pm | No Comments

Hannah Kelly is a Forty Acres Scholar who recently completed her first semester at UT. She spoke with the Alcalde about her brand-new hobbies, her relationship with her donors, and overcoming her fear of reading poetry to strangers. 

What are you studying?
I’m studying Plan II and journalism right now, and Plan II was definitely one of the deciding factors for me about UT. It is like a liberal arts school within UT. Journalism was more out of the blue. I like writing and I thought, “What’s a real-world application that could possibly be a career path for that?”

Are there any new activities you’ve taken up at UT?
I just randomly decided to go to Plan II Poetry Club one night, and they were like, “OK, whoever’s name you draw, send them a poem every day for a week and the next meeting they’ll choose one of your poems and read it to everyone.” And that was just catastrophic because I thought, “Oh my gosh, I don’t even know if I can write a poem.” But I loved it, and now I go to Poetry Club every Tuesday night, and through that I met Fred Tally-Foos, who is in charge of the Nocturnal, which is the Plan II literary magazine, and I applied to be a fiction editor; so now I’m there, and I get to read the fiction submissions and edit them, which is awesome.

Anything outside literature and journalism?
Yes. I joined Freshmen Founders, the entrepreneurship program for freshmen at UT interested in startups. I’ve never seen myself as interested in business, I had never really thought about startups, but it’s such an exciting community and it’s been so fun going to venues and meeting artists and working on this little project.

Can you tell me a little bit about your specific scholarship?
I have the Texas Exes Fort Worth Chapter Scholarship, it’s through the Waltrip family. It’s definitely special when they come to events and I get to catch up with them. It’s a special connection back to Fort Worth that they’re my UT donors.

Hannah Kelly is a Waltrip/Texas Exes Fort Worth Chapter Forty Acres Scholarship recipient.

Photo by Anna Donlan.

Tags: fort worth, forty acres scholars program, journalism, Plan II Honors