Humility Cohort

Victoria Kayode

Liberal Arts Honors, Psychology

My memories are coded by the songs that played in the background. Listening to music helps me to retrieve a year, a moment, or a feeling. This isn’t a novel phenomenon — we likely have overlapping sound bites connected to similar moments in time. Still, when I interpret the music, as it requires, what I hear is unique to me.

Carrie Underwood was one of my favorite artists as a kid. Her powerful voice, moving lyricism, and grounded messages helped me rise in the morning and were lullabies rocking me to sleep. Woven between the sulci of my brain are the lyrics on her Some Hearts album. One song from this album, dating back to my crayons and glue sticks days, came back to me at the start of my college experience – “Don’t Forget to Remember Me.” I resonated deeply with her reflecting on the 18 years preceding the fateful moment when she’d leave her small town for the downtown apartment that made her miss home. As she recounted the distance between her and her loved ones and the distance between the life she knew and the life she was building, she’d remind those back home, “Don’t forget to remember me.”

This song echoed in the chambers of my heart when I left Ashland, VA, for Austin, TX. It was a change I craved and needed, though I never would’ve guessed how beautiful life was about to become. Somehow, the school that “seemed good”, the city that “seemed cool”, and the people who “seemed nice” became home. They became the melody I sang in my sleep, the earworm I didn’t want to rid myself of, the hook that will stick with me forever.

Some days this fall were hard to wake up to, and some sleeps this spring were restless. I felt torn between past expectations, lofty assumptions, ideas of who I should be, and the woman I’d come to know myself to be. I struggled against my intuition many times and felt my self-trust wane each time. I became fractions of a score I no longer recognized — the notes altered their arrangement whenever I looked at the staves. Change, upheaval, and transformation were the dominating triad of this year, alternating unexpectedly between light and dark. Junior year had many ups and downs, with lows I thought I wouldn’t see again.

But I was never alone. When my voice grew hoarse, there was a choir to back me up. The harmony was part family, core friends, classmates, dance buddies, and Dedman community members. Whether they knew it or not, they helped me through the best and worst parts of this year. We shared so many fond memories and moments of connection. They continue to teach me more about love and what it means to be at once friends and family. Thank you to everyone for being and reminding me of the good in the world. I couldn’t be more grateful to have you all in my life; you make life worth living. As I approach the end of my time in the Dedman undergraduate community, I want to thank Dr. Musick, Dr. Woodruff, Julie, Sally, and my cohort for being some of my greatest supporters. I’ll never forget to remember you guys.

This year was dynamic, beautiful, scary, and exciting. I anticipate singing that Carrie Underwood song again when I finally do leave, but for now, I’ll sing another, “Lessons Learned.” Through all the uncertainty of my journey towards deeper alignment, there were many lessons learned. Growth can be painful, but it’s worth it. Sometimes feeling drawn back is prep to be slingshot forward. Community is everything. This year, I achieved several things and was recognized for accomplishments I’m deeply proud of, but you can reference my resume and LinkedIn for those. Here, I wanted to share a bit of the soundtrack of my life. Thank you for listening.

Aruna Muthupillai

Plan II Honors & International Relations & Global Studies

This four-year journey began not with certainty, accomplishments, or a clear sense of purpose. I started my Dedman journey unsure of my place. Unsure if I was ready. If I was enough.

But time has a way of changing the questions we ask.
What began as “Am I capable?” slowly became “What will it cost to try?”
And that’s when I began to understand Arjuna.

You may know the moment. On the field of Kurukshetra.
His bow doesn’t fall because he’s weak. It falls because he sees the faces on both sides of the line. Because he knows what his skill can do, and that knowledge drew pause.

I’ve been in that pause. Maybe not on a battlefield, but in the quiet moments before something big. Dedman never rushed me out of those moments. It didn’t force the bow back into my hands. It simply stayed. Dedman is a scholarship, yes. But more than that, it’s an inheritance of collective strength and care. Because Dedmans don’t just hand you an arrow. They sit beside you when the world is loud. They pass along a soft, slightly crusty blue blanket at the end of a long day. And somehow, that’s enough.

My time in this program hasn’t been marked by certainty. It’s been marked by doubt. Restarts. Saying yes to things I wasn’t sure I could do, and sometimes quitting when I needed to. But my time has also been marked by progress, by movement.

It’s because of Dedman that I’m here, writing this from Honolulu, where I’m working with the J51 Northeast Asia Policy Division at USINDOPACOM. It’s because of Dedman that I had the resources to take on a congressional internship with the Select Committee on Strategic Competition with the CCP, and before that, to work with the State Department and in think tanks across D.C.

And none of it felt guaranteed.

This program taught me to recognize Dedmans not by titles, expectations of triumph, or accolades, but by how they move through the world. Not in who speaks the loudest, but in who shows up with you and for you when it matters. In the protest line, in communities.

My cohort is my Dedman soul.
Milan: steady, forgiving, always there.
Tommy: supportive, no matter what.
Trinity: scarily competent, infectiously joyful
Victoria: fierce, kind, creative.

Each of them brilliant in their own way, experts in their corners of campus, always asking what more can be done. They make me believe a better world isn’t just possible. It’s on the way.

And Dr. Thea Woodruff, our cohort mentor. She reminds me of Krishna in this story. In a world full of people who say “yes” and disappear, she says “yes” and remains, even when things fall apart. Especially then.

That’s the story I carry now. Not one of certainty or glory. But one of action taken in spite of doubt. And maybe that’s how you know something mattered. Not because it ended with applause, but because it still lingers. Quiet as rain into red earth.

Milan Narayan

Plan II Honors & Philosophy

College has taught me to live in contradiction. I am more idealistic and disillusioned than when I began. I trust my instincts more and question my assumptions more. I speak with more conviction even as I believe fewer things absolutely.

Growing older in college often looks like self-assurance, but for me, it has meant grappling with paradoxes devoid of resolution. We are told to find purpose but diversify our skills. To be scrupulous but well. To be engaged but never exhausted. The more I live with contradiction, the more I see it. Each day confronts us with the reality that prosperity coexists with precarity. Turn on the news and you see institutions that claim to safeguard free speech operating under conditions of surveillance, all while pluralistic ideals flicker in the shadow of deep structural division. These dilemmas are unequivocally moral and legal, built into how we define harm, enforce rights, and decide who is worth listening to.

So, over the past three years, I have been trying to live in a house with uneven floors, learning how to walk differently. The slant remains everlasting, even everything feels still. This past year, I’ve focused not on fixing the tilt but moving through it with purpose, through the questions I asked, the arguments I debated, and in the friendships that reminded me what steadiness feels like. Not everything balances, but enough things hold.

One of the first things I did this past year was join Texas Blazers, a service organization built around leadership, spirit, and community. I was drawn in part by the clarity of its mission, but I became more involved and took on a leadership role because of the defaults it actively resisted—the kinds of contradictions that masquerade as inevitabilities. We push each other to think about what leadership actually looks like. I wanted to take responsibility for shaping who joins this organization, but overarchingly, for making sure those already there feel seen, supported, and challenged in the right ways. I ran for and became the co-chair of membership for the organization. This role—though nascent in my chairship—has taught me how fragile “community” can be when left to assumption and how much intention it takes to sustain something real. It has further illuminated how inclusion can never be a “solved problem” but a practice constantly revisited in institutions that wield power and carry history. Blazers has given me space to live inside those tensions without flattening them.

Blazers has also made me think more seriously about the spaces that make community possible. Social infrastructure is often invisible until it fails; I think of the patio where people gather after meetings, the basketball court that holds the weight of the space suspended between competition and communion, or the Dedman cushions that transform shared existential dread into ambitions beyond our bounds. What struck me most this year was how many of these spaces exist in contradiction: designed with good intentions but maintained disjointedly; open to all yet subtly shaped by who feels welcome. Dedman has often been one of those rare places where I have noticed the opposite. The suite (and the broader community) both invites and anchors reflection. In a year of shifting priorities and mental fragmentation, Dedman remained an invaluable and quietly essential intellectual infrastructure. If contradiction is a constant, then infrastructure poses the question of whether we make space for people to collectively and honestly live with it. Dedman has shown me that we can.

The space between what we build and what we tolerate also shaped much of my academic work this year. Through Plan II, I took a course on gun violence policy that forced me to confront a legal landscape full of internal conflict: the right to bear arms is so often interpreted in ways that undercut the right to safety while the language of liberty actively obscures systemic neglect. I deepened my work in the gun violence prevention movement. As I write this, I am thinking about the development of my thesis, which will focus on the gun lobby’s role in firearm trafficking out of the US. At the heart of this question is what accountability looks like when jurisdiction ends, even when responsibility does not.

I found yet another kind of institutional opacity while studying in Rome during May, which was generously funded by my Dedman scholarship. In Rome, I got to see the confluence of innumerable cultures as a new Pope was elected and began his tenure. During the school year, I completed my Italian minor, and I was grateful to be able to use the language as a tool of access and inquiry. I spent the month learning about the evolution of the modern papacy and researched the Catholic Church’s response to clerical sexual abuse. My philosophical side loved every minute in Rome; thinking about the moral injury of the Church forced me to ask how it could be that a religious institution speaks of justice while remaining structurally insulated from it. Walking through churches where beauty betrays the austerity of their namesakes reminded me, once again, that tradition often outlasts moral duty.

This summer, I have been working in the Harris County Attorney’s Office where I have done copious amounts of research into deed fraud. I have also developed policies for Harris County and the state of Texas to adopt to combat deed fraud. I have also had the privilege of writing speeches for our County Attorney, whose fervent commitment to a liberalist rule of law I abide by with admiration. Yet still, again, I keep running into contradiction. The law promises equal protection, but much of the work happens in the gap between that promise and its jagged delivery. In today’s legal and political landscape, that gap transcends neglection; it is deliberately widened with hopes that the public begins to forget that the guarantee was ever meant to be universal. I hope, this coming school year, that we choose to repair the standard of selective visibility that presently plagues our systems of governance.

I am forever indebted to the Dedman Program for the opportunity it has provided me. I am thrilled to meet Dr. Mason, and I am confident that the program will continue to be a bastion for intellectual complexity and introspection. Julie taught me how to be compassionate even as depravity swirls about. Dr. Musick taught me how to lead without encroaching. Dr. Woodruff, my cohort mentor, teaches me how to detach myself from the external pressures of the overachievers. Trinity teaches me how to relentlessly support others by meeting them where they are. Aruna teaches me how to balance remarkable responsibility with an unwavering commitment to a more just world. Victoria teaches me how to be honest with myself and remain rooted in my passions and values. And Tommy teaches me everyday about the value of a village in raising a child. I have never met anyone with such an inveterate love for the people around him. Above all, he has taught me how to smile.

It is my senior year. I know contradiction will remain in the laws I work within and the world I hope to shape. Through the grounding of Dedman, I am confident that I can meet it with clarity, rigor, and care

Trinity Ngo

Liberal Arts Honors, English & Rhetoric & Writing

Tommy Wan

Plan II Honors & Civil Engineering

Wow, it’s our final year. What a blessing and a journey it has been. I am grateful to the Dedman community and to the wonderful experiences I had this past academic year. Over the summer, I continued my fifth summer internship at the Houston City Council. Alief is more than my home in Houston—it’s a powerful mosaic of sari stores, taquerías, African groceries, Iglesias, dim sum spots, and Islamic Masjids lining Bellaire Boulevard. It’s a community defined by cultural prowess, working-class grit, and a sense of solidarity. However, Alief is burdened with the weight of deep-rooted challenges, including environmental injustices, low-propensity voting, infrastructure needs, civic neglect, and the title of the “Forgotten District” in local representation. Having the opportunity to work on constituent cases, housing research, and event planning has been a gratifying experience.

We’ve also continued to host compelling youth programs with AliefVotes. This year, we hired an Executive Director and a GOTV Manager, expanded and professionalized our Board of Directors, and significantly increased our budget—all in pursuit of youth empowerment and civic education for Alief ISD students. The community also drove resilience initiatives, such as a disaster preparedness workshop and numerous pocket prairie infrastructure projects throughout Houston. Seeing such an important issue being addressed with profound, tangible change is grounding.

As the summer wave wrapped up, I headed up north to Washington, D.C., with the Archer Center for a once-in-a-lifetime fellowship opportunity in the fall. I interned on Capitol Hill with Congresswoman Fletcher, who represents the Alief area. I learned a great deal about the federal policy-making process, the intersection of environmental issues and legislation, and opportunities to serve effectively in Southwest Houston. From night classes to discovering hidden gems around the City, I truly found a second home.

Returning to Austin in the spring semester, I’ve begun taking some of the most interesting classes yet—from Hydraulics Engineering to studying Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe, I’ve continuously grown in my studies alongside my peers. I also interned at the Texas Legislature with Senator Nathan Johnson, where I sharpened my skills in policy research, focusing on criminal justice, state affairs, economic development, and local government. I also passed my first bill, SB 2373, with a dedicated team focused on addressing AI-powered financial exploitation scams. It was an invaluable process, from writing the initial text to the final signature by the governor.

I am heading back home to the City Council this summer for another productive year. I’ve also recently traveled to Harvard Law School in Boston for the Future Leaders in Law Program.

My message to my peers and mentors: Thank you. I appreciate your love, bonding, and continuous support. In our lowest valleys, remember that our setbacks are only setups. Being part of the Dedman community is an immense privilege, and I am grateful to Dr. Woodruff, Dr. Musick, Julie, Trinity, Victoria, Milan, and Aruna. Indeed, a rising tide lifts all boats.