Oracle Online

Angela Froemming/Oracle: So you live in the Delta Tau house. What’s that like?

Megan Harvey: It’s interesting. I live in the basement; I kind of fell into it this summer. A lot of girls had moved out, and they were looking for someone to take her spot. So they called me and kept bugging me about it, so I finally looked into it, and I’m saving, like, $3000 living off campus.

O: What’s the best part about living in the Delta Tau house?

MH: Having my own room, having my own privacy. If I don’t want to be around the noise I can just go to my room, whereas when I had a roommate, I’d have to work with them in the room, too. I don’t have to share any of my space, and I have all of my own stuff, too.

O: How many people live there?

MH: There are eight of us. One, two, three, four, five, six, yeah, eight.

O: You’re a sophomore. Do have plans for a major yet?

MH: Yeah, I declared just last semester, actually. I’m a biology major.

O: What do you want to do with that?

MH: I plan on going to grad school for marine biology. I’m not sure exactly what I want to do with it. I personally want to do more research, maybe be a professor. I know I do want to get my Ph.D., though.

O: How did you get interested in biology?

MH: Well, I grew up in Alaska, I lived there for ten years. When I was there, we lived on a water way, and we would be able to go out and see whales on cruises, and I got really into it. I believe I was eight or nine, and my parents adopted me a whale out of Seattle, like an orca, they’d give money to a foundation. Technically the whale was in my name. I had a plaque with the picture on it and everything. For a long time I was obsessed, I knew I wanted to do marine biology, I wanted to study whales. Then in high school I kind of went back and forth. Then, the summer before I came here, my friends and I went to Hawaii. We got to go on this excursion where they took us out to a cove and we got out in the water and snorkeled and the dolphins that swim there wild came up to us and it was the most interesting and exciting experience I’d ever had. I knew at that point that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to study marine biology. It was my passion, I had to do it.

O: Have you been involved with any marine life since then?

MH: Being here, it’s a bit difficult. Last year I had to do a paper for an English class where I interviewed someone in the field, so I interviewed someone at the Underwater Adventure park in the Mall of America. I’m going to try to get a job there this summer.

O: Do you have a job right now?

MH: Yeah. I work at Wal-Mart. It’s not really something I’m interested in, it’s just something so that I can buy food and go out with friends.

O: A lot of people think Wal-Mart is evil and out to take over the world. Do you think this is true?

MH: [Laughs] Not really. You’ve got to ask them where they shop instead, because Target’s the same way.

O: I see you have a lot of piercings.

MH: Yes, yes I do. You could say I blame my mom. She let me get my ears pierced for the first time when I was seven. I have some tattoos, too. I got the first tattoo two months after I turned 18. Then right after I got my wisdom teeth out in May 2004, I was like, “I want to get my tongue pierced.” And I did. I showed my mom right away and she freaked out. She was like, “You better not tell your dad, he’ll be pissed.” So I didn’t, I was suprisingly able to get away with having it pierced all summer and him not knowing it. At this point he knows I have it pierced, and I know that he knows I have it pierced, but neither of us have acknowledged each other knowing that we both know. Since then I’ve gauged both my ears out, this year I got my industrial piercing, and I’ve gotten a couple more tattoos. I just recently got my foot done. Very painful. I plan on getting more. I actually have a friend drawing me out a mermaid right now.

O: Do you consider your piercings and tattoos a form of self-expression, or is there another reason?

MH: Maybe it was in high school, I kind of felt like I just fell in through the cracks, and it was my own way of standing out a little here and there. The tattoos all mean something, maybe a transition time in my life, or they have deeper meanings that show for something in my life, or occurred in my life, but I felt that it was a good way to remember them.