It's impressive when students' passions take them deep into their interests. It's even more impressive when their eclectic hobbies bring them into wide spans of activities. Lydia Pezzullo, a sophomore and cognitive brain science major, pursues music and poetry.
Pezzullo's varied range of artistic interests revolve around a common core of rhythms and beats: those present in the shifting tonalities and intonations of her spoken word poetry, the percussion of her tenor drums in the pep band and the sounds of the mallets she plays for the school's orchestra.
"A friend of mine did it at a local coffee shop," Pezzullo said about her introduction to spoken word. "We started going, and it turned out there was this whole spoken word scene: all of these different poets, some of them pretty accomplished. We started going every week, writing our own stuff, reading our own stuff."
Saying her style leaned more toward "traditional poetry," Pezzullo mentioned the diverse blend of hip-hop influences that many in the burgeoning Tufts spoken word poetry scene employ.
Pezzullo is also a member of the pep band, which she describes as a fun experience.
"We go to home games and one away game and have a strong and proud tradition of [eating] donuts at every game," she said.
Pezzullo is also involved in orchestra at Tufts. This semester, a percussionist from the orchestra who needed another drummer to play a symphony by Dmitri Shostakovich contacted Pezzullo, asking her to join.
Maybe cognitive brain science does lead to artistic explorations, after all.
