“Being in both arts and sciences has made my college education very well-rounded. In high school, I took a geology class and loved the material. I had questions about the landscape surrounding me, so I decided to major in geology. And then I chose a creative writing minor because I have always loved writing stories.

My friend Margaret Lines likes to say that science isn’t for the smart, it’s for the curious. I have always really liked that, because although I generally succeed academically, the main reason I am in college isn’t to get all A’s. The main reason is to learn what I can and chase creativity. Because of my interdisciplinary studies, I definitely take a weirder approach. I show up to science classes with an artist’s take and art classes with a scientist’s take. It’s always interesting to see how my classmates and professor react.

During my second year of college, I was taking a mineralogy class where I had an assignment to write a paper about a mineral. The professor said we could do whatever we liked, as long as we included certain information. I ran with that. I turned my paper into a film noir detective procedural and included facts in the footnotes. I got a terrible grade on the paper, but I had the most fun I’ve had in college writing it.

When it comes to creative writing, I like to integrate science into my work. I don’t like writing nonfiction, but I enjoy fantasy worlds that are scientifically accurate. When I am developing a fantasy map, I think about my geology studies and why certain formations and phenomena would go in certain places.

Creative writing has also improved my science writing. I took a flash fiction class where we were writing complete stories in 250 words. It was hard, but it made all of my writing more concise.

The College of Science Ambassador team has been another really important part of my experience at the U. Through this I’ve gotten to do a lot of work expanding people’s perceptions of geology, including kids. I’ve used my personal rock collection to help them learn about minerals, and now that I am graduating, I am curating one for the College of Science to have permanently.

There are so many things about our world we don’t understand and I love getting to inspire the same curiosity I feel in others.”

— Autumn Hartley, Class of 2025, B.S. in Geology, Creative Writing, College of Science and College of Humanities, from Heber, Utah