Honor Cohort

Olivia Castillo

Plan II Honors & Physics

If I had to sum up my junior year in three words, they would be enriching, restful—and humbling. During the fall semester, I barely survived my physics classes’ brutal attempts to weed me out. Other than testing new restaurants in Austin with my cohort every other week, that’s all I remember from that time. My first semester was completely outshined by my eventful semester in Mexico City.

My classes in Mexico were lovely, or at least, the one I took was lovely. Unfortunately, my Spanish was no bueno, a lesson I learned in my engineering class when I spent an entire lecture wondering what strawberries had to do with materials manufacturing. (Turns out fresa is also the name of a milling machine.) I further learned that day I was not qualified to take any courses in Spanish, so I had a light course load that spring.

With my free time, I focused on learning outside of the classroom. I plunged myself into the language and culture: gossiping with people on the metro, attending language exchanges, and, perhaps most importantly, racking up a 100-day streak on Duolingo. I even enrolled in a Latin dance course through my university and thoroughly embarrassed myself. (I like to blame my poor performance on the language barrier, but that was no excuse for my clumsy manoeuvres.)

Additionally, I met weekly with a graduate student to power through a textbook on Density Functional Theory, a computational tool I regularly use in my research. I also became a writing fellow for the American Physical Society. At first, the critical feedback from the editors was tough to hear, but each round of edits pushed me to become a sharper, more intentional science communicator. I had the opportunity to put my newfound knowledge into action by writing a story explaining Density Functional Theory and producing one of their first pieces in Spanish! This article was targeted at middle schoolers—perfect for my level of Spanish.

This year, I’m excited to continue my materials science research on solid-state batteries, to start drafting articles for the Oden Institute for Computational Science, and to TA for a class about science communication. I will still run the mentorship program I cofounded with the physics department last year and will still volunteer for causes I am passionate about.

Thanks to Dedman for giving me the financial freedom to live and travel in Mexico (and for treating me to nice dinners with my cohort). I am so grateful and can’t wait to see what unique experiences next year will bring!

Anjali Krishna

Liberal Arts Honors, English & Art History

It feels harder to write this note than any of my previous others for Dedman – maybe because it’s the last one or because I’ve spent a lot of the last year feeling more lost than ever.

I came into college with a dream, something hard to achieve, but possible if I worked hard enough – and work hard enough, I knew I could. But after internships that didn’t satisfy me, I felt disillusioned by the path I’d set myself on and confused on how I’d gotten myself there, how I’d thought so wrongly. It felt easy to breeze through my fall semester, finding only glimmers at classes on art deco and essays about affordable architecture.

It was even easier to run away to Barcelona for a semester, a city I fell in love with quickly. But much of the time I was there, treading through museums and seeing art I had only learned about in textbooks, I found myself wondering about the point of it all. I felt my time wasting away, confused about what my next step forward was if my passion had evaporated so quickly.

Things only felt different after I returned home, and even that took time. I wasn’t necessarily sure I believed going abroad would change or broaden my worldview before I went, but it did – I saw the people in Barcelona live a lifestyle I respected more than the American one. They were calmer, less stressed about the next step, and happier for it. It put things in perspective – I, too, could change things about my life and I wasn’t bound to the commitments I had made earlier, when I was too ambitious to see what lay in front of me.

Living in Austin for three years, I got comfortable and overcommitted to ideas I wasn’t sure served me any longer. I rarely took time to contemplate what I valued at this moment in time, rather than focusing on goals I had set years ago. Barcelona lent me fresh eyes and a different way of life – sending me to chase a career path which fulfills my moral values rather than aesthetic ones.

I changed my project for the Mellon Mays program, something I had dreaded working on but pushed through out of obligation. I decided on a gap year before pushing myself into graduate school of any kind. I held onto the things I loved, and left behind most remnants of a different me.

In the upcoming year, I plan to continue my role as a Writing Fellow for LAH 102H and take on a new position as Senior Print Editor at SPARK Magazine. Being away for the last six months, I’m excited to engage with young writers once again and witness their budding talent. Working with writers, editing and mentoring, has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I hope, in some way, to keep both writing and teaching in my life after graduation.

I am happy to be writing, once again from New York City, where I am working at Sotheby’s in the Books and Manuscripts department. The experience so far has been extremely rewarding, as I learn the ins and outs of an auction house and interact with top specialists in the field.

More than anything, I am grateful for the friends and family that have made this all possible – especially those in the Dedman community who have always been supportive of my every endeavor, pushed me to be better, and helped me think outside the box. The Dedman program has changed my life in ways I can’t put into words, and it is all thanks to the individual scholars and mentors.

I’m thrilled to have one more year to go on a campus that truly feels like home with new eyes.

Drew Wessels

Liberal Arts Honors, International Relations & Global Studies/Economics/Middle Eastern Studies

During the fall semester, with the support of the DDSP, I had the incredible opportunity to live in Tunisia, where I worked with a local NGO and took intensive Arabic courses. Being in Tunisia during its democratic backsliding was intense. Political crackdowns were becoming more frequent, economic instability was pushing the country toward the brink of default, and mass waves of refugees entered the country daily originating from war-torn countries in Sub Saharan Africa and the Sahel. Despite these challenges, I saw in Tunisia a civil society and young generation that refused to disappear or be silenced. That persistence felt real and hard-earned, not hopeful in an abstract sense but rooted in daily acts of resilience and a refusal to ignore injustice. These experiences and the friends I made taught me that even under oppressive conditions, individuals and communities find ways to resist, adapt, and persevere. They uphold their dignity and fight for their rights no matter what because yielding to repression is never an option. I left with a palpable sense of hope for humanity’s future.

Those six months of my life were truly transformative, and being able to travel all around North Africa and the Middle East was a dream come true for me. I now look back at nearly crashing on a motorbike in Cairo rush hour (my driver thought detouring through a wedding in a public park was a smart shortcut) and smile. At the moment, horrifying. In hindsight, hilarious. I remember renting a car with my friends and driving through the Sahara Desert in Tunisia with no signal, then getting stuck in the sand because we were stupid. This was, in the moment, incredibly stressful and humiliating. In hindsight, also hilarious, and more than worth it once the sky filled with thousands of stars and we lay on blankets in the dunes, surrounded by the most profound silence and peace I’ve ever experienced in nature.

Throughout my travels, I was invited into the homes of strangers in rural Oman and Egypt with a frequency that defied expectation. These encounters weren’t just about performative hospitality. They revealed a way of how people in the Arab world relate to others that is intentional and deeply human, grounded in connection rather than convenience. Those moments, both unpredictable and sincere, shaped the way I see the world, as well as our place within it. In a region too often unfairly labeled as violent and backwards, I found that it was in those quiet, often broken Arabic exchanges, far from the noise and chaos of the outside world, that I began to grasp the true meaning of community and trust.

Carrying these lessons and perspectives into my spring and summer semesters, I found myself approaching life with renewed gratitude and energy, eager to continue my studies of political economy, diplomacy, and national security. This May, I had the privilege of attending the Texas Intelligence Academy, an immersive program hosted by the Strauss/Clements Centers’ Intelligence Studies Project. Held in Washington, D.C., the academy provided a unique opportunity to engage directly with experts in intelligence and national security through lectures, simulations, and site visits. This experience deepened my understanding of the complexities of intelligence work and its critical role in global affairs, dispelling many of the cliches of our public servants’ misunderstood work.

For the past month, between academic programs, I have been backpacking through Georgia, Armenia, Mexico, Denmark, and Poland, connecting with many Deadmans along the way. I am finishing up my summer now at the University of Cambridge in the U.K., conducting independent research with the Cambridge Security Initiative under the supervision of incredible faculty from the intelligence, think tank, and policy worlds. My policy paper I’m writing explores how security dynamics in critical maritime chokepoints like the Straits of Bab al-Mandeb and Hormuz influence intelligence-sharing practices among Arab states in the Persian Gulf. I couldn’t be luckier to have such an amazing opportunity to refine my research skills under the direction of Renad Mansour, a senior research fellow at Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa programme.

Looking ahead to the 2025-2026 school year, I am preparing for one of the greatest challenges of my life: a 4,000-mile bike ride from Austin, Texas to Anchorage, Alaska, to raise funds for cancer research. I have no illusions about how simultaneously incredible and backbreaking this journey will be, but I am beyond excited to take it on, supported by the extraordinary community and resources available at UT. This year, I am also beyond excited to be a Brumley NextGen Scholar and Clements Center for National Security Undergraduate Fellow, programs that will challenge me to grow academically and personally. Throughout my time at UT, the guidance I have received and the lifelong friendships I have forged I wouldn’t trade for the world. Hook ‘em!