Humans of NSU
Preview
Interviewee Name
T. Brandon Hall
Date of Interview
Spring 3-29-2023
Location
NSU Tampa Bay Regional Campus
Brief Bio / Description of Interviewee
Finally, we get to the site for the night. We are putting up tarps, setting up camp fires, we have a little oven for us to heat up water. I’m trying to follow along and I’m not... I’m a city kid. I have no idea what I am doing. After things settle for the night and the sun sets, the rest of the students decide they want to go up to one of the fall summits and sit and hang out. They invite me and I go along. For the most part I sit and listen quietly. I will never forget; I broke through the tree line and… stars… as far as you can see. It was like the sky was bejeweled. I had never seen the sky like that. I listened to the students talking about their lives because we all came from different places. Most of them were from New England. That was my second night away from my family and it set the tone because I got accepted by the students. Two more days of hiking and we finally get back. I am not feeling great. We dropped off our equipment, but I had to swing by the nurse just to say “Hey, I don’t feel great”. She says “You have a 103 degree temperature. It says in your file that you are asthmatic. We are pretty sure you have bronchitis.” So, we call my mum and she proceeds to freak out a little bit. She says “I’m so sorry. If you wanna come home, you don’t have to do this.” They had left just a week ago and she says “you don’t have to do this.” For the first moment, I thought “oh all this time they’ve been asking me my opinion on what to do. They really meant that!” I thought kids were just supposed to be seen and not heard. It was really the first time where I realized I have agency. I can make a decision here. I was like “oh no no I am fine”. It really changed the whole trajectory of my life. I realized that I had more agency than I thought I had. I started becoming more extroverted, trying things I otherwise would not have tried. That’s when I started acting for the first time. By senior year, I had the lead in the play and became well known on the campus. Before I was even accepted when the guidance counselor came down to Florida to visit, she asked if I really wanted to do this because I was going to rural Maine. And I looked at the table of adults and said “I think I would like to try.”
Camera Equipment
Nikon Z6
Audio Equipment
iPhone 11 Pro Max
Keywords
exhibit, photographs, life stories